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WAR PICTURES 
BEHIND THE LINES 




Frontisviece 



LE BATAILLON SACRE 

By Maurice Neumont 
(Reproduced by kind permission of the Artist) 



WAR PICTURES 
BEHIND THE LINES 



ijAji. IAN, MALCOLM, M.P. 

AUTHOR OP • A CALENDAR OV EMPIRE ' 
' INDIAN PICTURES AND PROBLEMS,' ' CONSIDERATIONS,' ETC. 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 



NEW YORK 

E. p. BUTTON & COMPANY 

681 FIFTH AYENUE 

1915 



.M35 




PRINTED BT 

SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. LTD., COLCEESTEB 

LONDON AND ETON, ENGLAND 



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To my Constituents 

This Record 

of work done and of things seen 

during the first year of 

The Great German War 

is respectfully 

Dedicated, 



AUTHOR'S NOTE 

My grateful thanks are due to so many people 
who, consciously or otherwise, have provided me 
with material for my book that I can only acknow- 
ledge my debt, in one comprehensive phrase, to 
all my French and Enghsh friends for the valuable 
assistance that they have given me. 

Especially, however, are my thanks due to 
the Chairman of the British Red Cross Society, 
by whose permission I am enabled to include 
Chapters IV and V which deal in detail with one 
aspect of our Red Cross work, and to those French 
artists who have so courteously allowed me to 
reproduce their admirable pictures in this 
volume. 

Further, I am indebted to the French War Office 
and to MM. Berger-Levrault and Cres (Publishers, 
Paris) for the German diaries that will be found 
herein, and to certain gentlemen in Switzerland 



Vll 



viii AUTHOK'S NOTE 

who gave me tlie original documents containing 
German orders to French refugees. 

To one and all I am deeply obliged, and I beg 
them to accept this inadequate expression of my 
thanks. 



\ 



PREFACE 

Not long ago, I was talking to the principal 
medical officer of a French Military Hospital, 
situated on a high plateau and far from any rail- 
way station. In the course of our conversation, 
I asked him some question about the progress of 
the War. 'The War,' he replied: 'I know 
nothing of it except that it fills my hospital. My 
whole time and energy are devoted to considering 
how I can get my patients from the station to the 
wards, how quickly I can get my food supplies, 
what I am to do for water if the springs fail 
me, and other problems of immediate concern.' 
I was much struck by this observation, which con- 
tained a great truth. This German War is of 
a magnitude so vast in its dimensions that no 
human being can grasp it as a whole, or make one 
huge panoramic picture of the events that succeed 
one another with lightning rapidity in that 



X PREFACE 

world-wide arena of suffering and hate. Generals 
and privates alike have only just time in the day to 
concern themselves with the immediate prospects 
in front of them and their next-door neighbours, 
whether in the trenches or at head quarters. So 
with non-combatants and the public generally : 
we all become specialists and, for once in our lives, 
take very little heed of other people's business. 
' Where your treasure is, there will your heart be 
also' is applicable not only to the mother whose 
son is fighting in Flanders and who, therefore, gives 
no attention to the happenings in Asia Minor, in 
Poland, or on the Izono, but also to the ambulance- 
driver, who knows no battle-field but that one 
from which he daily conveys the wounded to 
hospital, and to the railway transport officer on 
the lines of communication, upon whose organising 
power ' the Front ' is daily depending for reserves 
of men and ammunition and food supplies. In 
all these cases, the business of the day is their 
' treasure,' and in it are wrapped up both heart and 
brain. 

And not least does the old Biblical truth apply 
to the author of a book about the War. He can 
only write readably about what he has seen and 
heard in the very limited area of his own activity 



PREFACE xi 

— a mere corner of one of the many scenes in 
that liuge theatre of operations. But, with good 
fortune, he can paint his own small picture ; and 
from this, together with a thousand other pictures 
similarly painted, may hereafter be derived some- 
thing like an accurate impression of a world at 
war. 

I write this by way of a warning preface to 
my own book, for I am well aware of the modesty 
of its scope. It contains no word of strategy or 
politics : I am unable to discuss the former and 
unwilling, to-day, to embark upon the latter ; so 
I leave the questions of the origin and conduct of 
the War to pens more competent than mine. Nor 
will there be found herein anything of life and 
death in the trenches which I never visited ; nor 
of other dangers such as our Army knows too well, 
but with which I am unacquainted : these have 
their own chroniclers, whose first-hand evidence 
I could not supplement if I would. 

The main object that I have in view in writing 
the following pages is to record certain features 
of Red Cross work in which for the past year I 
have been engaged, to sketch scenes that I have 
visited and people I have met in the course of my 
journeyings behind the lines, and to offer reflections 



xii PEEFACE 

and impressions of the effect of the War upon the 
lives and fortunes of those with whom I have come 
in contact. And I have tried, in selecting illustra- 
tions to accompany these chapters, to include a 
few minor documents of contemporary interest 
which many of us have seen, but which some may 
have thrown aside. 

For the rest, my readers must have recourse 
to other and more important works ; my ambition 
will be satisfied if I have succeeded in conveying 
a clear idea of the work of the ' Wounded and 
Missing ' Department of the Eed Cross Society, 
and of the immense help that we have received 
from the unvarying kindness of the lion-hearted 
people of France. 

IAN MALCOLM 

Fbance. 
August 1915 



i 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTEK I 

THE FIRST PHASE 

PAGE 

The Kaiser's Birthday — Parliament and War — Recruiting 

in England — Posters — The Soul of England ... 1 

CHAPTER II 

EAELY IMPRESSIONS 

Paris in October — Cordial Relations — British * Phlegm ' and 

French Calm — General Criticism — ^How Long ? . .12 

CHAPTER III 

WORKS OF MERCY 

The Red Cross — ^Hospitals in Paris — ^A Changed Capital — Life 
in Boulogne — ^Hearts of Gold — ^Home Generosity — ^A 
Dastardly Trick ....... 27 

CHAPTER IV 

MISSING AND WOUNDED 

A New Department — The Silent Brave — Searchers — The 
Work extends — ^The French System — Record and 
Casualty Office — ^Help from all Quarters — First Aid for 
the Anxious ••..... 37 

ziii 



xiv CONTENTS 

CHAPTER V 

OUR NOBLE DEAD 

To find their Graves — * A Noble Aspiration ' — Our Methods — 
Assistance from French Authorities — Sympathy every- 
where — ^Priests and People — Graves Registration Com- 
mission — ^A Visit to Meaux — The Soldier's Cross . . 50 

CHAPTER VI 

ON THE ROAD 

Red-tape — Passports and * Permis ' — Soldier Friends — 
Marching along — Spy Stories — Wa,T in the Air — ^IMen and 
Women under Fire — ^The Imperturbables ... 63 

CHAPTER VII 

SELF-EXAMINATION 

* As Others see Us ' — The Martian's Report — Pleasure and 
Pessimism — ^The Vast Majority — ^A Spirit of Sacrifice — 
External Illusions — ^The Zouaves on Shirkers . . 78 

CHAPTER VIII 

THE RAVAGE OF WAR 

ChantiUy and Senlis — A Pilgrimage of Passion — * Souvenirs ' — 
The Prince at Bethisy — Nery — In the Forest — ^Villers- 
Cotterets — ^A Woodland Cemetery — Dead Letters . . 92 

CHAPTER IX 

TOWARDS THE FRONT 

La Ferte-sous-Jouarre — Joint War Monuments — ^A Famous 
Abbey — In a French Hospital — ^AUied in Sorrow — The 
Commandant at Fere — An Amusing Incident — On * Joy- 
riding ' — Fismes and the Sentry — Under Fire — ^A Concert 
in a Clearing Hospital — ^Mass before Action . . . 108 



CONTENTS XV 

CHAPTER X 

JOAN OF ARC 



A Visit to Orleans — The Anniversary — No Processions * as 
usual ' — French and British Tributes — Passing Reflections 
— In the Cathedral — A Wonderful Ceremony — Her 
Festival at the Front — Impressive Scenes . . . 125 

CHAPTER XI 

INTER ARMA CARITAS 

A * Neutral ' Atmosphere — Geneva — Censorship of the Press — 
The International Committee of the Red Cross — Its Works, 
Responsibilities, and Success — ^The Refugees' Help Society 
— On the French Frontier — Experiences of the Exiles — 
German Switzerland — Berne — Charity for All . .136 

CHAPTER XII 

A RAILWAY JOURNEY 

The * Grands Blesses ' — Return from Exile — Happy Warriors 
— Inventive Newspapers — ^Demonstrations^of Welcome — 
Home at Last ........ 149 

CHAPTER XIII 

IN ITALY 

Milan — Ready — A SociaUst Meeting — Off to the Front — 
War Fever — Red Cross Work — Refugees — The Battle - 
spirit 162 

CHAPTER XIV 

WAR AND THE CHURCH 

The Fall of MateriaUsm — ^The Furnace of Pain — Regeneration — 
Scenes in the Churches — Soldier-Priests — Our Shortage — 
Burial of General Hamilton — ^Mass under Fire — ^A Funeral 
Sermon — ^The Hermit — A Belgian Priest — Recognition — 
General de Castelnau .176 



^;:i 



xvi CONTENTS 

CHAPTER XV 

FROM MY DAY-BOOK 

The Icon— Legend of Arras— Czenstochowa— Saint Sofia— 

A Spy Story — Christmas in Lille I93 

CHAPTER XVI 

DOGS OF WAR 

Dispatch-dogs — Four-footed Searchers — Wounded and 
Missing— Societe Nationale— A Popular Movement- 
Training the Dogs— The Barbizon School— KiUed in 
Action ••....... 207 

CHAPTER XVII 

THE year's end 

' How Unexpected ! ' — National Achievements — * Confound 
their PoHtics '—Vive V entente /—The Inspired Traveller- 
True Faith — Reflections on Montmartre — ^Aeroplanes 
at Midnight — Victory and Peace . . . .216 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Bishop of 



Le BaTAILLON SACRi) 

The ' Whirlwind Campaign ' . 

' Bulletin des AbmIies ' . 

L'Heure du Taube 

Si les Zeppelins revenaient. 

German Diary 

The Cemetery at Braisne 

Monseigneur Emmanuel Marbeau, 
Meaux .... 

The Cathedral, Meaux . 

An Old Soldier 

' Si j'iiTAis A LA Place de Joffre ' 

Requisition Receipt for Champagne 

The Soldier's Cross 

French Clearing Hospital : Summer Quarters 

The Staff and English Visitors . 

Statue of Joan of Arc .... 

The Cathedral, Orleans .... 



Frontispiece 

To face p. 6 

14 

20 

page 21 

To face p. 36 

50 

58 

58 

68 

82 

page 96 

To face p. 98 

120 

120 

„ 128 

128 



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Austrian Prisoner Camf in Nokth Italy 

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Dogs of War with Rep Cross Paoges . 
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WAR PICTURES 
BEHIND THE LINES 



CHAPTER I 

THE FIRST PHASE 

The Kaiser's Birthday— ParUament and War— Recruiting in 
England— Posters— The Soul of England 

In January 1914, it was my fortune to be in Berlin, 
as a guest of the British Ambassador, for the 
birthday of the Emperor William. Twenty years 
before, I had been attached to the Embassy and 
had not had speech with his Majesty since then. 
Nothing could have exceeded the friendliness of 
his conversation, which was concerned largely with 
English politics generally and with the likelihood 
of Mr. Churchill rejoining the Unionist party. 

Two days afterwards, I had a long talk with 
the now notorious Crown Prince, and his words 
have since earned an added significance. Let me 
copy from an old diary the last few phrases, in 
the form of a dialogue. 



2 WAR PICTURES 

Crown Prince. 'After all, you English people 
ought to be better friends with Germany than 
you are.' 

I, M, ' Sir, we are always ready to be friends 
as you know, but to all of our overtures your 
Chancellor replies with an invariable snub.' 

Crown Prince. ' How can we trust you whilst 
you are allied with such people as the French 
or the Russians ? You have nothing really in 
common with them, and you have nearly every- 
thing in common with us. Together we could 
divide Europe and keep the peace of the world 
for ever.' 

I. M. ' But how would you propose to do 
that ; given our existing treaties, how could we 
break them in order to be better friends with 
you?' 

Crown Prince. ' You could shut your eyes 
and let us take the French Colonies first of all. 
We want them.' 

/. M. ' Forgive me. Sir ; I have seen several 
of your Colonies and, may I say it with great 
respect, it would surely be better to improve the 
Colonies you possess before you take those belonging 
to other people.' 

Crown Prince. ' That is very candid ; but 



THE FIRST PHASE 3 

you know very well that none of our Colonies are 
worth, anything ; if they had been valuable, you 
would have had them long ago ! ' 

I could not help laughing heartily at this last 
observation, which was seasoned with great good 
humour. The interview closed by my making 
the trite remark that now-a-days nobody wanted 
war, which injured victors and vanquished in like 
degree ; to which the Crown Prince vigorously re- 
plied : ' I beg your pardon ; I want war, I want 
to have a smack at those French swine as soon as 
ever I can^ 

Compare this conversation with the famous 
Dispatch 85 in the English White Paper, which 
tells of Sir Edward Goschen's last interview at 
the German Foreign Office eight months after- 
wards ; then let the German apologists reiterate 
their conviction that a peace-loving Fatherland 
was compelled to take up arms against the intrigues 
of her enemies. 

As this is a book of personal impressions, I 
will add this note, before leaving the subject of 
my visit to Berlin: I was quite convinced that, 
at any rate in the Prussian capital, the Crown 
Prince and the military party were the masters 
of the Parliament and the people. The Heir- 

B 2 



4 WAR PICTURES 

Apparent was the idol of the populace — I dare say 
that Rehoboam was the same in his day . Wherever 
he drove, the people stood and cheered him ; the 
Emperor was treated with the utmost respect, 
as well he might be, but never was he the object 
of constant demonstrations of popular affection, 
such as I saw exhibited towards his eldest son. 
I am not going to hazard the opinion that nothing, 
at any time, would have made the Emperor 
William break the peace of Europe ; the evidence 
of events of the past twenty years forbids so rash 
a speculation. But I do firmly believe that the 
present War, at the present time, with all its hideous 
accompaniments of slaughter and barbarity, is 
due to the headstrong policy and the degenerate 
impulses of the Crown Prince and the Military 
party in Prussia. 

And yet I will confess that, even with this 
warlike witness to a desire for conquest before me, 
I could not believe, early in last July, that we were 
so close to the day of Armageddon. Even towards 
the end of that month, I was as doubtful as his 
Majesty's Ministers appear to have been whether 
Great Britain would go to war. But I am sure 
that the nation, on learning all the facts, saw the 
path of honour and duty more quickly and clearly 



THE FIKST PHASE 5 

than did the responsible advisers of the Crown ; 
and that nothing but the official intimation that 
there was a solid patriotic Parliament behind the 
Prime Minister put an end to that lamentable 
period of tension and doubt between July 31 and 
August 4, which made a Briton's life intolerable 
in England and unendurable in France. Never 
shall I forget the relief caused by the speeches of 
Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Asquith in Parliament 
when we knew that the ultimatum was to be 
delivered and we felt that the die was cast. It 
was of the first importance to a people, not over- 
inclined of late years to give deep thought to 
policies or problems that do not concern their 
incomes, to have a definite course of action marked 
out for them by the leaders of their choice. That 
course was at last most clearly defined : it was, 
to repeat the words of the late Lord Goschen in 
reference to a serious crisis in our domestic affairs, 
' to make our wills and do our duty.' 

From that moment began the transfiguration 
of our nation, though Parliament lagged behind. 
When we had recovered from the wholly unexpected 
shock of finding ourselves face to face with war 
against the greatest military power in the world, 
there was not a decent man or woman in the Empire 



6 WAE PICTURES 

who did not immediately say secretly or aloud : 
' What can Z do ? ' Under our peculiar, if time- 
honoured, system of government that question 
had to be answered by the individual who asked 
it: no lead was given by Ministers, no initiative 
was taken to organise the industries or the manhood 
of the nation. We, who did not belong to either 
the Navy or the Army, were as sheep without a 
shepherd. What was ot^rduty? What could we 
do ? My own chance came when Lord Kitchener 
published his first request for 100,000 men as the 
nucleus of a new Army. Being, unfortunately, 
untrained in military exercises and also beyond 
the age -limit prescribed for recruits, I thought 
I might at least be able to help as a recruiting 
agent. Talking over the matter one evening 
with Major Archer-Shee, M.P., he told me that 
Lord Kitchener had sanctioned his taking a 
' Travelling Eecruiting Bureau ' into the West of 
England and he advised me to get permission to 
do the same thing in another area. By August 17, 
I was equipped : with four motor-cars, a doctor, 
a recruiting-sergeant and a couple of clerks, a 
full and self-contained recruiting-agency, we set 
out to do what we could to raise men in Norfolk 
and in Suffolk, part of which latter county I had 



THE FIEST PHASE 7 

represented in Parliament for eleven years. I 
mention this fact, in itself quite unimportant, 
because it brought out so vividly the unanimous 
determination of all parties to do their utmost for 
the country. Day after day, night after night, 
I was speaking in towns and villages at meetings 
arranged by the agents of both political parties, 
and attended by old friends and old foes alike. 
All feuds were healed, all daggers sheathed, 
opponents of life-long standing spoke from the 
same platform, party colours were blended and 
buried in red, white, and blue ; and all this months 
before Parliament understood that the nation 
wanted a non-party government to see this thing 
through. 

Our recruiting-methods were no less unusual 
than was the new atmosphere which now permeated 
my old constituency and East Anglia generally. 
The plan was for our fleet of cars to leave our 
head quarters about 10.30 each morning, and to 
drive in procession with flags and placards through 
a certain section of the area allotted to us. In 
this way great interest was created in the 
agricultural districts, both in the War itself and 
in the matter of recruiting. At each village we 
used to stop — or sometimes by the roadside, to 



8 WAR PICTUEES 

have a word with the harvesters — and often picked 
up a recruit or two, occasionally a dozen, before 
the evening. On the principle of striking while 
the iron is hot, we always managed to get a private 
room in a cottage or an inn, to interview the recruit 
before enlisting him. If he seemed fit and willing 
our doctor examined him, the recruiting-sergeant 
answered technical questions as to pay, separa- 
tion allowance, &c., the clerks filled up the papers, 
and, as a magistrate, I swore him in for a soldier 
of the King and gave him a railway ticket to the 
nearest depot. The procedure in the evenings 
was very much the same : we tried to keep to 
short speeches and few, in order to get through the 
necessary formalities for all recruits before leaving 
the neighbourhood. Sometimes this kept a double 
staff working till past midnight, but if they could 
come back with thirty recruits to their credit, 
they were delighted and no fatigue was too great 
for them. 

I am afraid, on looking back to those interest- 
ing but comparatively calm weeks, our irregular 
methods must have been a great trial to the more 
highly organised, but not very elastic, system of 
the regular Army — as represented at the depots. 
The majority of the officers were extremely kind 



THE FIRST PHASE 9 

and patient with us, though we must often have 
upset their calculations for food, &c., by sending 
them a score or so of properly attested recruits 
of whose existence they had no idea until the 
men arrived from the train. And more than 
once, in large centres like Ipswich and Norwich, 
the depots had to be closed in order to get suffi- 
cient staff and material to cope with the splendid 
numbers that responded to the call. Altogether 
it was a novel, curious, and most interesting 
experience — this ' whirlwind campaign,' as it 
came to be called. We held twenty-two meetings 
between August 20 and September 3, and were 
responsible for about two thousand recruits, 
drawn from the best of all classes in Nelson's 
and Kitchener's counties. 

Thus encouraged, I went next into Sussex 
and Kent and held twenty-four meetings in 
thirteen days. But here the results were not so 
good. Others had already been working these 
districts with admirable results ; the standards 
for height and chest measurement had been raised, 
and, I am sorry to say, the accounts sent home 
from various camps of the poor accommodation, 
scanty food, and bad clothing arrangements were 
quite sufficient to deter hundreds of moderately 



10 WAR PICTUEES 

willing men from becoming soldiers. This is 
not the time to blame or criticise the deficiencies 
of those early days. They were probably un- 
avoidable in a country taken by surprise, and 
they are certainly remedied by now, but they 
were bitter while they lasted : they recoiled upon 
the head of Authority, which was not altogether 
blameless, and substantially counteracted the 
efforts of those who were recruiting in its name. 
Here ended my work at home, and I left it 
with very definite impressions. The secret of 
recruiting is found, I am certain, in personal 
relations being set up between those who know 
and those who want to know ; the day of the 
' poster ' is over and done with, for general elections 
and the wiles of politicians have taught all men 
to distrust and deride such elementary aids to 
decision. The analogy of commercial advertise- 
ment does not hold good as regards recruiting : 
the Government has nothing to sell and the 
citizen does not require to buy ; but the former 
has a story to tell and a demand to make to 
grown-up and responsible men and women, which 
cannot be fairly expressed upon a wall. I am 
sure much time was lost and thousands of pounds 
were thrown away by using these vicarious forms 



THE FIRST PHASE 11 

of appeal, which would have been quite un- 
necessary if all the ' powers that be ' had stepped 
down from their pedestals and, having made up 
their minds what was wanted, had gone to all 
the people of the three kingdoms to ask for it. 
As for the people themselves, they are willing 
and true as steel. They have proved it in all 
these months, as they have slowly grown to know, 
through the sorrows of the heart or the effort 
of unaided intellect, how desperate and dark is 
the conflict through which we have to pass to 
victory and peace ; but now that the truth, the 
whole truth and nothing but the truth, is their 
possession — a treasure of their own finding to a 
very large extent — their response in offering 
millions of lives for their country is the highest 
possible expression of their deep faith in the 
grandeur of the cause for which they are at war. 



CHAPTEE II 

EARLY IMPEESSIONS 

Paris in October — Cordial Relations — British * Phlegm ' and 
French Calm — General Criticism — How Long ? 

Towards the end of September I realised that the 
new model for recruiting-meetings was to crowd 
a number of speakers, representing different parties 
in the State, on to a platform, and to let them 
all speak for as long as the spirit moved them. 
I attended two or three such and observed that 
the spirit first ' moved ' the audience, whose enthu- 
siasm to follow the drum sensibly evaporated after 
three-quarters of an hour in some covered building 
on a warm autumn evening. 

I, therefore, accepted the invitation of the Bed 
Cross Society to enlist with them, and to do what- 
ever might be most useful at the moment. My 
first job was to escort a band of some fifty nurses 
over to Paris at the beginning of October. Except 
for the fact that nobody knew what was to become 
of them when they got there, our journey, via 
Folkestone and Dieppe, was uneventful, though 

12 



EARLY IMPEESSIONS 13 

somewliat long. Once arrived, my charges were 
billeted in various places, and, on the following 
day, were consigned to the various hospitals that 
were clamouring for their services. 

It was a curious experience to me, who have 
known and loved France for a quarter of a century, 
to realise that now I was in the capital of an 
invaded country with the enemy only three hours 
distant from my hotel in the heart of the city. 
But such was, nevertheless, the fact, and it became 
more apparent by day and night as time went on. 
For instance, the morning after my arrival, I 
was awakened by the explosion of a bomb — not 
a very loud or deafening noise, really — from a 
German ' Taube,' a bird of prey which was far too 
much at home over Paris in those days and until 
the necessary steps were taken to see that, if it 
chose to fly so far afield, it came at its peril. But 
so much has already been written about the 
appearance of Paris in the autumn that it is hardly 
worth while to add to the volume of impressions 
that have already reached the public. After the 
shock of the retreat, even after the miracle of 
the Marne, who could expect Paris (or any self- 
respecting city) to be normal or anything but 
darkened and depressed ? The barricades were 



14 WAE PICTURES 

still standing at the gates, the city was full of 
wounded allies, the enemy only eighty kilometres 
distant : what wonder that La Ville Lumiere had 
become a City of Dreadful Night, that hundreds of 
shops were shut, that Government and Embassies 
and Banks had retired to Bordeaux, that theatres 
were closed, that churches were crowded ? ' There 
was no surprise, surely, in all this ; the wonder 
was that, despite the traditional Gallic tempera- 
ment — volatile, impulsive, and impressionable— 
so many thousands of shops remained open and 
hundreds of thousands of French citizens of the 
humble classes carried on their daily avocations 
with a sang-froid and imperturbability that is 
beyond dispute or praise. 

Of course we were under Military Law, and 
a very good law too : nobody could move out 
of Paris without a pass, or stay there without 
complying with the strictest formalities as to 
papers, &c. Restaurants were closed at 9.30 p.m. ; 
no shop lights nor illuminated advertisements 
nor sky-signs were permitted ; no head-lights on 
motors nor naked lamps shining from the windows 
of private houses or elsewhere, save only the great 
protecting military search-lights which quartered 
the city from dusk till dawn. After London 



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p'tujrn ilu cmtnt an miKutrti. 



SITUATION MILITAIRE 

(U ao3t.) 

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«i lies arin^c;^ la voii de U France. 

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tuiKc Ltair ks Wiabo jdo^ucv 





FACSIMILE (reduced) OF NO. I ISSUE OF THE BULLETIN DES ARMEES 



EARLY IMPRESSIONS 15 

(in those days) it certainly was a change, but not 
a surprising one. We were so awfully close to 
the ' real thing.' Our impressions of the war were 
not gathered from reading morning newspapers 
at a comfortable breakfast-table, but rather from 
men who had been under fire in the morning and 
brought in the news at luncheon-time. That is, 
surely, the reason why nobody grumbled, or yet 
grumbles, at all these curtailments of personal 
liberty and comfort. Nobody had the heart 
to spend the night in a theatre or at the cafes : 
hearts were buried in the trenches on the Aisne. 
Since then things have certainly become a 
little easier, socially speaking: that is to say, the 
restaurants are now open till ten o'clock, a few of 
the theatres give performances so many times a 
week, but they and the music-halls have to be 
very careful that their repertoires do not outrage 
by levity or otherwise the feelings of a nation that 
is in desperate earnest. I well remember the re- 
ception — shall I call it hostile ? — that was accorded 
to quite a favourite variety artiste in the winter 
when she suddenly, without forethought or malice 
of any kind, took it into her head to introduce 
a few ' tango ' steps into her ' turn.' In a moment 
she perceived that she had made a mistake, and 



16 WAR PICTURES 

quickly she retrieved it : the season of 1914r-15 
could not weather the sort of programme which 
1913-14 had applauded. 

But there remains one thing which does not 
change and upon which I like to dwell — that is, 
the wonderful kindness displayed to any who wear 
khaki uniforms. We of the Red Cross wear it, 
I believe, at the orders of the War Office ; but it 
is not we who sowed the harvest of delightful 
friendship which now we reap. This is due, and 
we know it well, to the splendid qualities of the 
Expeditionary Force which left England in August ; 
to officers and men who protected the women and 
played with the children and fought alongside the 
men of France as cheerfully as though they had 
all been bred together in the same country. I 
could weary even the most patient reader with 
stories told me, on my journeys over past battle- 
fields, of the gallantry and good humour of 
' Tommy ' — a name light-heartedly given at home 
to our soldier-folk, but one which is held in 
affectionate remembrance wherever he has fought on 
French soil, and which lends a reflection of his glory 
to those of us who are privileged to wear his cloth. 

It was enough to walk through the streets of 
Paris in October to benefit by the legacy which 



EARLY IMPRESSIONS 17 

the Britisli soldier has left to others of his race. 
People sitting next to one in a restaurant would 
want to pay for our luncheons ; children would 
run up and clamour to shake hands or to pin a 
tricolour flag upon our tunics. One dear old 
lady, who sold newspapers at a kiosque on the 
Boulevards, absolutely declined to allow me to 
pay for my daily copy of The Times, In spite 
of all my remonstrances, she insisted : ' I won't 
take a sou from you ; I am a good Frenchwoman 
and a good friend ; you are my friends.' So 
for weeks I compromised by giving her a daily 
bunch of violets in exchange for my newspaper. 
In the country it was just the same : even now 
one is mobbed by jolly little children as one goes 
about one's business in the towns or hamlets 
between the Marne and the Aisne. And, whenever 
I hear that joyous cry ' les Anglais, les Anglais,' 
I feel proud for the men who, by their example 
and their courage, have won from our great Allies 
and their children the regard which we non- 
combatants are permitted to share. May the sun 
never rise upon the day when that regard shall 
diminish through any fault of our own ; and may 
we never forget that, although we islanders have 
perforce to make our homes in many lands, we are 



20 WAR PICTUEES 

two fields that had been mercilessly pitted by 
the offspring of ^ Jack Johnson ' and ' Black Maria/ 
Since then heavy rain had fallen and had filled 
these immense holes with water. By the side 
of one such sat Tommy, solemnly fishing with 
rod and line. ' What are you doing, my lad ? ' 
said my friend. ' Fishing, sir,' replied the angler 
without a smile on his face. ' But you can't 
catch fish in a shell-hole like that, you know ' ; 
to which the answer was, ' Wait and see.' So 
my friend waited and saw. Tommy soon landed 
quite a big fish, to the utter amazement of the 
onlooker, who asked how it was done. ' Well 
you see, sir, yesterday I was off duty and went 
down with my net to the river, yonder. I caught 
lots of fish and put them into these holes for 
me and my pals to catch when we wanted them.' 
; But, after all, though our race is good-naturedly 
chafied about its phlegm by a race that pretends 
to nothing of that kind, the French (in Paris at 
least) have it also to a large extent. For instance, 
when the ' Taubes ' came soaring over the capital 
about five o'clock every afternoon in the autumn, 
there were immense crowds waiting to see them 
without the least sign of fear. One day they 
were late ; the crowd waited till nearly six o'clock, 



EARLY IMPRESSIONS 



21 



and I heard an impatient voice exclaim : ' I wish 
they would be more punctual, I shall be late for 
dinner.' 

And even now, when we get telephonic news 
from the Front that Zeppelins or aeroplanes are 
on their way to Paris, when street lights are 
extinguished and ' pompiers ' tear through the 
boulevards in motor-cars, sounding the ' alerte ' 



La 4emi-Alerte de laauit derni^re. — Ce que Bcront d^Bormftis 
les souiierles de olairon des pompiere. 




LA . ERELOQUE • OU . BERLOQTTE • ANNONCANT LA FIN DB L'ALERTE 



upon their horns to warn everyone to go to ground, 
there is no particular excitement except on the 
part of the police. A little girl was heard to 
ask her mother (who had evidently forgotten 
the regulations) whether she should dust out the 
cellars and make the beds there for the night ; 
and an old lady who, with hundreds of others, 
was waiting for the ' Zepps ' on the highest point 



22 WAR PICTURES 

of Montmartre, turned upon the policeman who 
ordered her to take cover somewhere : 

' What next, I should like to know ? I have 
a son fighting in the Argonne and my old man 
is fighting in Champagne : until you give them 
umbrellas to keep off the shells I'm going to 
stay out in the open too ! ' 

So you observe that, even in the matter of 
keeping cool, we are drawing closer together as 
time goes on. 

I am sure we can all remember the days when 
it would have been impossible for an Englishman 
and a Frenchman to discuss quietly the propriety 
of racing in war-time ; but in the early months 
of this year it was a constant topic of amicable 
difference in club or cafe. I am pretty certain 
in my own mind that the French, on the whole, 
disliked our racing in England. I judge that, 
not so much by anything hostile which they said 
or wrote, but by their evident' relief and satis- 
faction when we gave it up. Again, the present 
excellent relations are well typified by a conver- 
sation in which I engaged with a couple of French 
officers. The one was inclined to be a Httle 
impatient as to the non-arrival of our new Army 
on the shores of France, and pretended to be 



EARLY IMPEESSIONS 23 

incredulous as to the existence in England of 
three million men under arms. He was also 
critical of our unpreparedness in the matter of 
shells, and I was beginning to feel rather uncertain 
as to what my reply should be. Fortunately 
his companion metaphorically fell upon him and 
replied : ^ Do you doubt the men that England 
can send : then probably you doubt the number 
she has sent already when she only guaranteed 
us a hundred thousand. But you might well 
be uncertain whether, if we had not compulsory 
service, we could send even two million trained 
volunteers to fight over in England. For myself 
I doubt it. And, as for being unprepared — we 
ought not to bring that charge. What have 
we been doing over here for forty years except 
demonstrating before the Statue in the Place 
de la Concorde and calling for " La Revanche " ? 
Were we prepared when the great moment arrived ? ' 
I, naturally, could not have said all that, but I 
was grateful to the man who did say it, especially 
as he succeeded in persuading his friend to adopt 
a more lenient attitude towards our failings. 

But neither our racing nor our unreadiness 
annoy our friends the French so much as oui 
insular slackness as regards our treatment of 



24 WAK PICTUEES 

enemy aliens. I was out at the Eront some time 
in April or May when the announcement was made 
in Parliament that so many thousands — was 
it 24,000 ? — of Germans were at large in Great 
Britain and Ireland. It is not too much to say 
that this declaration simply staggered our allies by 
its apparently callous indifference to consequences. 
' Fancy seeing even one hundred known Germans 
at large in France to-day ! ' But, here again, as 
I find myself in complete accord with their con- 
demnation of our policy of arrogant adhesion to 
a dangerous tradition of hospitality to strangers 
within our gates, there is no estranging difference 
between us. I will, however, record my con- 
viction, if only for my own satisfaction, that our 
practice of consciously harbouring the enemy 
has created a profoundly bad impression in France 
and that, if persisted in, it will jeopardise the 
harmony of an international entente which ought 
to be safe from risk of every kind. 

Another fruitful subject of discussion is the 
probable length of the War. ' How long will it 
last, do you think ? ' — a question which I have 
always thought that no wise person should either 
ask or answer. Until quite recently, I could not 
meet a single Frenchman in civil or military life 



EAELY IMPEESSIONS 25 

who would listen to Lord Kitchener's prophecy that 
it might last three years; but now their natural 
impatience is controlled, and they are becoming 
resigned to the chances of a struggle more 
protracted than once they thought possible. They 
have lost confidence in the clairvoyants and 
soothsayers who predicted for the conclusion of 
the War certain dates that have, alas ! long since 
passed into history. Of the prophecies only one 
that I know of still has its chance of fulfilment : 
it is the forecast of a young Breton model, who 
was sitting to a well-known painter of military 
subjects. At the beginning of last July, several 
weeks before war was declared, the model arrived 
at the studio and announced that war was 
imminent. The artist took this for a joke and, 
without looking up from his work, said, ' When 
shall we know ? ' And the young man answered, 
' On August 2.' 

' And when will it be over — can you tell me 
that ? ' 

' On May 22.' 

' Very well ; come and see me on the following 
day, and we shall then know if your guess was 
correct.' 

But the model shook his head sadly and 



26 WAE PICTURES 

replied : ' Alas ! I cannot accept that invitation 
for I shall be killed in the last week of November.' 

The remarkable thing is that war with France 
was declared on August 2, the model was killed 
on November 27; as for the War being finished 
on May 22 — well, the year was not specified. 

But whether the end come soon or late, it is 
not possible now to find a Frenchman who is not 
absolutely confident of a final and crushing victory 
for his country. Time was, perhaps, when the 
morale of the civilian population needed stiffening. 
It was partly achieved by a story which is now 
well known, but I repeat it because it has made 
history. Two French soldiers in the trenches 
were discussing the chances of victory. 

' Yes ; not a doubt of it,' said the one, ' pourvu 
qu'ils tiennent.' 

' Qui 9a ? ' 

' Les civils.' 

This anecdote ran like wild-fire through the 
length and breadth of France and had an immediate 
effect upon the civilians, who, ever since, have 
' stuck to it ' as the French soldier said they must. 
It is capable of a still wider application — to lands 
beyond the Eepublic of France. 



CHAPTER III 

WORKS OF MERCY 

The Red Cross — ^Hospitals in Paris — ^A Changed Capital — ^Life in 
Boulogne — Hearts of Gold — ^Home Generosity — A Dastardly 
Trick 

The work of the British Red Cross Society will 
loom large in the pages of the first full history 
that is written about the German War. There 
will be things to praise and things to blame, of 
course ; but there can be no doubt that, in the 
relief of suffering abroad and anxiety at home, 
this organisation has fulfilled a splendid mission 
of mercy, despite difiiculties and jealousies and 
minor defects upon which it would be unwise to 
dwell at present. Like other organisations of a 
more ofiicial character, the Red Cross was taken 
by surprise when war broke out ; if excuses are 
to be found for the Cabinet and Parliament and 
other professional bodies, they can certainly be 
found for the Red Cross, which is essentially an 
amateur society that has to suffer for the defects 
of its qualities. Unlike Minerva it could not, at 

27 



28 WAR PICTURES 

any rate it did not, spring into being fully armed : 
perhaps in future it will be permitted to accompany 
the British Army on manoeuvres in peace-time, 
and to learn how best it can serve and combine 
with the R.A.M.C. in time of war. But that is 
another story ; here and now we have to admit 
that, in order to take its proper place, which is, 
I suppose, somewhere between the troops in the 
trenches and the families at home, it had to 
improvise an enormous staff at a moment's notice 
to operate in France as well as in England, and 
those who know most about its work are just 
those who marvel most at what it has accomplished 
for the wounded. Much has been written in many 
books about the details of Red Cross work ; its 
fleets of motor-ambulances, hospital ships, trains ; 
its armies of doctors and nurses and orderlies now 
working not only in France and Flanders, but in 
Malta, Alexandria, Serbia, Italy, and elsewhere ; 
its huge consignments of stores and appliances 
and comforts which are daily being shipped in 
bulk to its ever-expanding theatre of operations 
oversea. It is no part of my task to add to what 
has already been said, but only to speak of it as 
I have seen it and, later on, to describe a branch 
of its work of which little is known and nothing 
has been written. 



WOEKS OF MERCY 29 

When I reached Paris in early October, the 
head quarters of the B.R.C.S. was at the Hotel 
d^Iena, a large building with an immense number 
of bedrooms, which had been generously placed 
at the disposal of the Society, but which I thought 
inconveniently constructed for its work. Still, 
there the work was carried on ; thence long 
processions of ambulances started early every 
morning for the Front to bring back their sad 
burden of wounded and dying to the Paris 
hospitals ; there doctors and nurses by the hundred 
received their instructions as to where to go : 
cargoes of hospital equipment were dispatched 
to their various destinations as fast as they could 
be loaded ; crowds of willing workers and anxious 
relatives besieged the doors of different depart- 
ments asking for employment or for information 
about their wounded. It was a scene of tremen- 
dous and unceasing activity in which all, from the 
Commissioners down to the last- joined orderly, bore 
a noble and unflinching part and worked often for 
twenty out of the twenty-four hours of the day. 

The hospitals were no less marvellous. Never, 
I suppose, since war began have hospitals been 
so wonderfully organised for the wounded as 
those in Paris for the troops of the Allied Forces : 
that, at any rate, was the decided opinion of the 



30 WAR PICTURES 

General Staffs and of the patients. The Avenue 
des Champs Elysees is, as all the world knows, 
full of great and fashionable hotels, in some of 
which many of us have stayed and revelled in 
the piping days of peace. But in September 
every one of them was converted into a hospital 
— the Astoria, Claridge's, the Elysee Palace, and 
others. And how deeply impressive was the 
change of scene ! No more splendid carriages 
and opulent automobiles waiting for hours out- 
side the doors ; but ambulances, dirty and shot- 
riddled, discharging their precious freights of 
broken lives into these havens of compassion 
and care ; no more processions of fashionable 
men and women crowding into the marble halls 
to listen to Hungarian bands at afternoon tea- 
time, for these same halls had been turned into 
wards for French and English wounded. The 
drawing- and dining-rooms were lined with beds, 
the saloons with the best light became the operating- 
theatres, the bars were dispensaries, and the grill- 
rooms were reverently transformed into mor- 
tuary chapels. Strange sudden transformations, 
indeed ! — stranger still to realise that rooms so 
hallowed by suffering are even now returning to 
the purposes of their origin. 



WORKS OF MEECY 31 

As in Paris so at Boulogne, the change was 
no less apparent. Most of us remember the pier 
in normal times : its cheery aspect, the sunshine 
and the bustle, and the merry old fisherfolk who 
greeted us holiday-makers as we arrived on the 
steamer from Folkestone. But now — a knot of 
soldiers, a group with heads bandaged or arms 
in slings, a crowd of fine-drawn officers and men 
returning from the trenches for seventy-two hours' 
leave : these form the main body of occupants of 
the pier, the approach to which is blocked with 
wooden cases of stores, machinery, and other 
military impedimenta for the Front. The harbour 
is full of shipping, most of it inactive for the 
present ; there are two large hospital-ships, how- 
ever, on to which an unending cortege of stretcher- 
bearers are carrying casualties to be taken home 
for treatment and so to free as many beds as 
possible for urgent cases that are brought down 
by train from the battle-fields. One stands 
amazed at the cheeriness of the wounded wherever 
one comes across them ; a tearful or complaining 
soldier is nowhere to be seen. ' Oh well, some- 
body's got to get it,' is the philosophic comment 
which is always on their lips. Only once did I 
see a soldier crying; the doctor was at his 



32 WAE PICTURES 

bedside trying to comfort and assure him that 
he would soon be all right ; then I heard the 
wounded man say, with gentle scorn : ' Don't 
think I'm crying about my leg, doctor : I was 
just dreaming about my captain whom those 
devils shot dead in my arms, as I was carrying 
him back from the trenches.' 

Yes, their consideration for others and for- 
getfulness of self is an example to us all. What 
could be more touching than a story which my 
wife tells of a visit to one of the hospitals in 
Boulogne ? She was talking to a little Saxon 
prisoner whose head was swathed in bandages, 
when a tall strapping fellow in the Gordons pushed 
his way on crutches through a crowd of conva- 
lescents and said to her : ' Would you mind saying 
to him that I'm sorry I had to bash him so hard 
on the head with the butt of my rifle, and I hope 
I didn't hurt him much.' 

But outside as well as inside the hospitals, 
the world is showing a charity and loving-kindness 
that is widespread and genuine. The solicitude 
for the welfare of our wounded soldiers, exhibited 
by well-to-do and poor French people alike as the 
train-loads slowly crawled back to Paris from 
the Marne, was splendid though sometimes 



WORKS OF MERCY 33 

embarrassing. For not only would they pass 
food, drink, and flowers into the compartments, 
but, where there was a chance, they would some- 
times coax a man out of his carriage and take him 
to a chateau or a cottage and nurse him till he 
was well enough to rejoin. In their goodness of 
heart, and in their ignorance of our Army regula- 
tions, they overlooked the necessity of reporting 
their kind action to the authorities, and from this 
cause many a man was reported as ' missing,' who 
subsequently turned up strong and well, thanks 
to the care of his newly found friends. And here 
is another instance of spontaneous charity. One 
morning my wife was shopping in the market-place 
at Boulogne and stopped to buy a few flowers for 
the men in hospital. She had been especially 
begged to bring back as many violets as she could 
carry, and so took a huge basket with her for the 
purpose. It was a gorgeous day and the radiance 
of the sun upon the flowers, set out upon their 
little stalls beneath coloured umbrellas, was in 
festive contrast to the sombre scenes from which 
no worker in the wards could escape. A little 
group of children followed and heard her ask one 
old lady to sell her all her violets for our wounded. 
It took a few minutes to collect the bunches and 



34 WAE PICTURES 

pack them carefully into the basket. Meanwhile 
the children had dispersed ; they had scattered 
about the market announcing that here was an 
English lady who wanted flowers for her hospital. 
The result was that, when the original transaction 
(all but payment) was completed, the Enghsh 
lady found herself surrounded by beaming and 
benevolent peasant-women of all ages, their snow- 
white aprons filled to overflowing with violets 
and roses and carnations which they emptied into 
the basket until there was not room in it for another 
petal. ' Take these, and these, and these, with 
our love to the brave English soldiers,' they said. 
' We would give you ten times as many if we had 
them.' Not a penny would they accept ; but I 
know that if they could have seen the faces of 
the soldiers who received their gifts, they would 
have felt amply repaid. 

From home, too, we got everything we could 
want in the way of comforts for the men. Surely 
never was such lavish generosity known before, 
and I wonder if we can ever compute in terms of 
money the endless stores of books and wool and 
playing-cards, of jig-saw puzzles and mouth-organs, 
of cigarettes and matches and newspapers that 
were sent over to France by a grateful British 



WORKS OF MERCY 35 

public! I can quote the case of my own con- 
stituency of Croydon as an example — one out of 
hundreds. For the purposes of my own work in 
the hospitals, I wanted a good supply of tobacco, 
so I wrote and asked my constituents for it through 
the local newspapers. Within a month, I received 
fifteen large wooden cases full of cigarettes and 
cigars, pipes and tobacco and matches, besides 
numberless smaller consignments. One case was 
sent by children ; it was packed with boxes of 
cigarettes each containing a Christmas card or 
a letter from the donor. I copied one letter which 
particularly touched me, written in large pencilled 
letters between ruled lines : 

Dear Soldier, — 

Mum has asked Father Xmas not to put 
toys in our socks so he has sent us money instead 
to buy the brave men something. I hope you will 
like these. 

Love from 

* * * 

It is well to add, in closing this chapter on 
works of mercy, that in our English hospitals, 
whether military or Red Cross, the treatment of 
the German wounded was beyond praise. They 
were made to feel — and all I spoke to told me that 
they did feel — quite at home, and they were not 

D 2 



36 WAE PICTUKES 

backward in expressing their gratitude for all 
that was done for them. The same is true in 
French hospitals, and one wonders who can have 
spread the malicious lies to the contrary effect in 
some neutral countries. Yet so much feeling has 
been stirred up here and there abroad, by these 
and by other methods, that some of our enemies had 
resort to a strangely mean form of what I suppose 
was meant for reprisal and which came under my 
notice. German prisoners of war in France are, 
of course, allowed to receive parcels of warm under- 
clothing, &c., addressed to them at their place of 
internment. Imagine my horror on being shown the 
central content of a dozen such parcels — a dagger 
concealed in each one, with a murderous blade 
eleven inches long, stamped ' Muenchen ' (Munich) ! 
How many more were detected I do not know ; but 
the lives of many French sentries were probably 
saved by the astuteness of the Paris police. Can 
calculated atrocity go farther than this ? I think 
not ; but now a days it is impossible to be sure. 



fl. .■ ^ • 



'-■ y-t's.pUi^A.yi^'y. .'/ .V*/U^^1y^^ / \, 



n '-n ; 



y Wl-t-^tAyVvv -vnv /V^W 



yr^^. 



u 



vii^vt 



\ \ 



iTVf '-tt-lvllAA/' >'^l^ AiAl^y />V.v' ^v 



1^^ 



Les bandes „CONTINENTAL" chev- 

ronnees, creees par ., CONTINENTAL" 

ont cte .idoptces sur les autobus dc la 

Ville de Paris par la C. G. O. 



A liorrible slauirliter, the village was burnt, the French thrown into the burning 
houses, and civilians and everything else burnt with them. 

Hard lighting is still continuing. Yesterday two guns, sis ammunition-wagons, six 
machine-guns were captured. The worst of all is the hunger and thirst which have 
to be endured everywhere. Dry bread thrown away by the Prench on the battle-field 
serves. . . . 

This extract is taken from the diary of Private Hassemer, 8th German Army Corps. 



CHAPTER IV 

MISSING AND WOUNDED 

A New Department — The Silent Brave — Searchers — The Work 
extends — The French System — Record and Casualty OflBce 
— Help from all Quarters — First Aid for the Anxious 

Missing, ... A distracted mother is wandering 
through the forest and the woodland villages 
that encircle Compiegne and lead south to Villers 
Cotterets. It is autumn, and the leaves are 
beginning to turn ; the forest laments, for fallen 
trees and charred scrub and heather still mark 
the ruthless march of the Germans as they pursued 
the Allied Powers towards the river Marne. 
The mother, an English mother, is searching 
for her son who is officially reported ' missing.' 
She can only ask questions at the mairies, of 
the gardes-champetres, of the schoolmistresses, 
in the desolate hamlets through which she passes. 
She can only peer into the little pencilled in- 
scription, attached to a tiny wooden cross which 
sometimes marks a soldier's grave, or try to read 
the German words, hurriedly written on the blazed 

37 



38 WAR PICTURES 

trunk of a tree, indicating that ' Here lie the 
bodies of British soldiers who perished on the field 
of battle.' But all in vain; she can learn nothing 
of her only son ; he is ' missing.' 

This is a true story, and it led to the creation 
of the ' Wounded and Missing ' Department of 
the British Red Cross Society, with which I have 
had the good fortune to be associated since its 
beginning. The conception of this new branch of 
activity was due to the sympathetic imagination 
of Lord Robert Cecil, who presided over its work 
until he joined the Coalition Ministry last May. 
Like many other good inventions, it became an 
absolute necessity before many days were past. 
No sooner was its existence discovered than long 
files of mourners visited the new department to 
try to get help to find their husbands or sons 
or brothers who were lost. Tliither, too, came 
letters and telegrams, first by the score and then 
by the hundred, all burdened with the same piteous 
refrain : ' Where is he ? can you not help us ? ' 
The following is a sample of thousands of com- 
munications which by this time have reached us : 

Dear Sir,— 

I am a very poor woman and want to 
know how much it would cost to try and find my 



MISSING AND WOUNDED 39 

husband. He was officially reported ' missing ' 
two months ago and I am heart-broken as I 
can hear nothing of him. Sir, do you think he 
is dead or can he be a prisoner in Germany or 
somewhere else ? Please will you try and find 
out for me and his children. 

It may be of some interest to the hundreds 
that we have been able to help, to know some- 
thing of the method that was devised to obtain 
news of missing members of the British Expedi- 
tionary Force. 

The first necessity was to make sure that the 
man was not in hospital somewhere in Paris 
or in France, and for this purpose a daily list 
of admissions into every hospital was an essential 
preliminary. If you can imagine how terribly 
understaffed the clerical departments of all the 
hospitals were at that time, and that typists were 
practically non-existent in them, you will realise 
how deeply grateful we were to those who gave 
us one of their precious lists in manuscript. Some 
hospitals simply could not furnish us with them, 
but they let us go in at stated hours to copy the 
names from their books ; all helped us according 
to their ability when once they discovered the 
purpose of our request. Then came the work 
of card-indexing all these names and comparing 



40 WAR PICTURES 

them with the enquiries ; none but our devoted 
secretariat know how monotonous this never- 
ending labour was at the beginning, when the 
staff was small and the lists were of appalling 
length. The reader may well say, ' But why 
was all this necessary ? Surely a man writes 
home as soon as he gets into hospital, or gets 
somebody to write for him.' The answer simply 
is that, in a large majority of cases, he does nothing 
of the kind : that is one of the curious phenomena 
of this war. Whether it is that he tliinks the 
War Office will already have notified his where- 
abouts to his relatives at home, or whether he 
does not want to cause them anxiety by learning 
that he is wounded, I do not presume to guess ; 
but a very short experience of hospital visiting is 
sufficient to prove the truth of what I am saying ; 
both in the cases of officers and men. 

Now we return to our methods for finding 
' Missing,' when they did not appear on the 
hospital lists. Gradually Lord Robert Cecil 
gathered round liim a group of men whom we 
called ' searchers.' These were allocated to the 
different hospitals and received permits from the 
Officers Commanding to visit at convenient hours. 
Each took with him his ' Missing ' Hst, and got 



MISSING AND WOUNDED 41 

into conversation with regimental comrades of 
the particular man of whom news was wanted. 
He would go, for example, to the bedside of a 
Sherwood Forester or an Irish Fusilier and ask 
him if he or any of his company knew what had 
happened to (say) Sergeant X. of the same regiment, 
who was reported ' Missing ' after such and such 
an action on a given date. Sometimes, of course, 
the man was too nerve-racked for us to attach 
real value to his answers ; sometimes he ' thought,' 
but was not quite sure, that this or that had 
happened. In other cases, he remembered quite 
distinctly, and no amount of kindly cross-examin- 
ation could shake him. ' I saw him killed close 
by me and helped to bury him,' or ' I was one 
of the stretcher-bearers who carried him to the 
dressing-station,' or ' He was one of a lot who 
got left behind and was taken by the Germans.' 
All this information was carefully noted, taken 
back to the office to be typed and filed ; then it 
was compared with evidence about the same 
man collected in other hospitals by other searchers, 
and, if three or four independent witnesses gave 
the same evidence, the news was sent to those 
who were anxiously waiting for it. That was, 
in rough outline, the system which experience 



42 WAR PICTURES 

showed us was attended with the best results ; 
with slight modifications, it has been adhered 
to as the Department has developed. 

Later in October when the British Army left 
the Aisne and departed into Northern France 
and Flanders, our wounded were no longer sent 
to Paris, but the bulk of them went into hospital 
at Boulogne and in that neighbourhood. Simul- 
taneously the Red Cross moved its head quarters 
from Paris to Boulogne and there we opened a 
branch of the Enquiry Department shortly after- 
wards. Here the difficulties were greater, from 
our point of view, than formerly ; for, alas ! the 
hospitals (I think there were sixteen in the 
Boulogne area alone at that time) could not 
accommodate the train-loads that were for ever 
coming down from the Front, and men were 
constantly being transferred to hospital-ships to 
free the beds at the base. This, of course, made 
it difficult, indeed almost impossible, for our 
searchers to find and to visit hundreds of men 
who might have been able to give us information, 
since there was hardly time for us to find out 
that they were in Boulogne and to reach the 
hospital before we learned that they had been 
sent back to England. The only chance was 



MISSING AND WOUNDED 43 

to have a searcher ready to visit each ship as it 
was filled, and to gather such news as he could 
from the invalids in their bunks before the anchor 
was weighed for home. By the end of the year 
Boulogne was full, and Rouen became the next 
great hospital centre ; so in January we opened 
yet another branch there, to explore that large 
field for enquiry. There, besides in the hospitals, 
a great deal of first-rate information was gathered 
from men in the reinforcement camps, on their 
way back to rejoin their regiments after recovery 
from wounds received early in the War. Our 
staff often mentioned with special joy the evidence 
they got from non-commissioned officers who 
had brought back their old diaries, containing 
records of casualties at Mons or Le Gateau, which 
occurred under their eyes and which, but for these 
entries, must have passed from their memories. 

During the present summer, we have installed 
a fourth branch at Le Treport, a fifth at Staples, 
a sixth at Havre, a seventh in Malta, and an eighth 
at Alexandria, with a Head Office now in London ^ 
— all working on the same lines to help to alleviate 

1 This Office {at 31 St. James's Square, S.W.) is now the Central 
Clearing House for all information gleaned at home and abroad. It 
has a very large staff to deal with enquiries and is furnished icith full 
lists of prisoners as they are received from Germany. 



44 WAR PICTURES 

the untold agonies of suspense that torture the 
families of the ' Missing.' I am sure it is only the 
deep pleasure of assisting, by a ' find,' to relieve 
one single aching heart that enables our searchers 
to continue this work for months at a time, steeped 
as they always are in an atmosphere of pain, and 
listening for hours to stories of heroism and tragedy 
that will never be surpassed. Here and there they 
come across an incident that lightens the darkness 
of the day. One searcher told me of a surgical 
ward in which a cricket-match was already 
arranged, though the date had not yet been fixed, 
between an eleven of ' left legs ' and a team of 
' right legs ' ; another was greatly amused by a 
story he had been told by a man suffering from a 
gunshot wound in the body. The doctor who 
had to examine him was an eye-specialist by 
profession. The man's wound did not appear 
to interest him nearly so much as his eyesight. 
' Rather defective, is it not ? ' queried the doctor. 
' Please look at my side,' suggested the patient. 
' Certainly, certainly, in a moment ; but beheve 
me, what you need is a good pair of spectacles.' 

But such incidents are few and far between ; 
when they do occur they carry the searcher through 
many a bad quarter of an hour. 



MISSING AND WOUNDED 45 

Wounded 
At the beginning of this chapter, I have 
described the method by which in Paris we were 
able to get hospital lists in order to be able to answer 
enquiries. That was at a time when there was 
only about a score of hospitals for British wounded 
in France, whereas now there must be close upon 
a hundred of one sort and another. There is, 
therefore, a different kind of enquiry to deal with 
which occupies a great deal of our time ; it comes 
from the anxious relative who writes or telegraphs 
to know in which of all these hospitals so-and-so 
is lying. The information that A. B. is wounded 
has reached his home, through the War Office or 
some other source ; but whether he is in a Clearing 
Hospital or at Boulogne, at Eouen or Versailles, 
or elsewhere, may not be stated. There is, I 
believe, some official difficulty in letting A. B.'s 
exact whereabouts be known, but I have never 
been able to understand wherein it lies. In French 
hospitals, with the exception of Clearing Hospitals 
which are up at the Front, no such difficulties 
exist. Whenever a patient is admitted, there 
is an Army regulation that the principal medical 
officer shall send a postcard within twenty-four 



46 WAR PICTURES 

hours to his next-of-kin, stating the nature 
of his wound and how he is progressing ; 
more than that, a further postcard is dispatched 
every seventh day after his admission, so that 
the family's anxiety is reduced to a minimum. 
Obedience to this order is strictly enjoined, and 
the doctors tell me that they obey it gladly, seeing 
that it adds but a fraction to their existing 
work, gives immense satisfaction to, and involves 
practically no further correspondence with, dis- 
tressed relatives at home. I should much like to 
see the same scheme adopted in all our hospitals, 
instead of leaving it to the option of the wounded 
man to communicate with his family from an un- 
named hospital ' somewhere in France.' 

Such a plan, with all its other advantages, 
would incidentally relieve our Department of a 
duty which it is very difficult to carry out. Indeed, 
it would be impossible but for the existence in 
Paris of a most useful branch of the War Office, 
called the Record and Casualty Office, under the 
command of Colonel Netterville Barron, R.A.M.C. 
This Department^ receives daily lists of admissions 
and evacuations from every base hospital in France 
which tends the British wounded, together with 

1 Closed in July 1915. 



MISSING AND WOUNDED 47 

the medical ofl&cer's observations upon each case. 
The vast amount of information there received 
is dealt with by a large body of workers in an 
incredibly short space of time. Each case has its 
own card, containing the full history of the casualty 
(from a medical point of view) from the moment 
it reaches hospital until the man is either sent 
home or returns to duty, and each card finds its 
alphabetical place in one of a hundred volumes 
ranged round the walls of the office. The Wounded 
and Missing Department, which is allowed access 
to these files, can thus find out with the minimum 
of labour where A. B. or X. Y. is lying, and can also 
give relatives a rough indication of the nature of 
the casualty which has brought a man into hospital. 
But this Record Office has also great statistical 
value for the present and the future ; since it con- 
tains material for tabulating the diseases which 
affect the British Army in the field, according to 
divisions or brigades or regiments, thereby enabling 
valuable comparisons to be made and deductions 
to be drawn concerning the health of troops and 
the precautions taken (or neglected) in given areas 
to avoid preventible disease. Other help, which 
is most generously given to us, comes from the 
Third Echelon at the base, which receives daily 



48 WAR PICTURES 

the official lists of casualties from the Front ; 
from the French War Office, lists of such of our 
wounded as have found their way temporarily 
into French hospitals, with tables of names of 
British prisoners in hospitals in Germany. And, 
last but not least, the International Red Cross 
Society at Geneva has been kind enough, since 
the end of last year, to forward to us weekly copies 
of the lists of our fellow-subjects, whether British, 
Colonial, or Indian born, who are interned in 
Germany or Austria or Turkey. With all this 
assistance, and with the help which the head 
quarters of our department in London receives 
from the War Office, the American Express 
Company, and from other public and private 
agencies, it is our privilege to have been able to 
console and advise thousands whose appeals, too 
piteous to reprint, more than justified Lord Robert 
Cecil in creating, and the Red Cross Society in 
supporting, this new Enquiry Department. 

I hope that this unvarnished recital of the 
kind of work that we set out to do, and of the 
methods by which we try to do it, may be of some 
public as well as personal interest to the many 
nations now closely identified with Red Cross 
work. To me it seems that every Red Cross 



MISSING AND WOUNDED 49 

formation, of whatever country, should have an 
Enquiry branch attached to it in every centre, 
just as it has its hospitals or its ambulances, its 
doctors or its supplies. The Red Cross Organisa- 
tion throughout the civilised world exists for the 
relief of suffering in war-time ; but, hitherto, the 
mistake has been made of limiting its compassion 
to the victims of battle. If only we could feel 
that the anguish, great as it is, stopped there ! 
We know, however that it is far more widespread 
than this, and that the exquisite pain, endured 
at home by those who have given all that is dearest 
to them to fight for their country, can be in some 
degree relieved and assuaged by such methods 
as I have tried to record. It is work which should 
have the approval of every War Office and the 
support of every Government, as surely as it has 
received the blessings of thousands to whom it 
has brought the consolation of definite news to 
mitigate the haunting miseries of suspense that 
rival the terrors of death itself. 



CHAPTER V 

OUR NOBLE DEAD 

To Find their Graves — * A Noble Aspiration ' — Our Methods — 
Assistance from French Authorities — Sympathy Everywhere 
— Priests and People — Graves Registration Commission — A 
Visit to Meaux — ^The Soldier's Cross 

In the preceding chapter, I have indicated the 
main activities of the Wounded and Missing En- 
quiry Department. To those who have read thus 
far, it will not seem strange that we attempted 
something more — in the direction of softening 
the grief of those who live to mourn their heroes 
and to cherish their memories. To this end, it 
was felt that we might well try to discover and 
to protect the graves of our dead soldiers who, 
in the stress of battle, had been hurriedly buried 
in trenches or by the road-side, in garden or 
quarry, on the side of a hill or in the depths of 
the forest. For nothing in life or death, amid 
all the varied scenes of pain and sorrow in war- 
time, impresses the mind with so dark a picture 
of utter loneliness and desertion as does the 

50 



OUR NOBLE DEAD 51 

sight of a soldier's grave standing alone outside 
some ruined or deserted village, or hidden away 
in a copse, half-buried by the brushwood, with 
nothing to mark it but the remains of a tiny 
flag or a forage cap or a dilapidated cross. 

It must be a comfort to our fellow subjects to 
know that, so far as human power can prevent 
it, no fate so miserable will overtake the last 
resting-places of those whom we have loved 
and lost upon this kindly soil. Both in Northern 
France and in Flanders, every nerve is being 
strained to keep a record of the countless graves 
of those who have died, and are daily dying, that 
their country's cause may live ; to preserve, by 
tarring or varnishing existing crosses, or by sub- 
stituting permanent for temporary ones, the 
myriad humble monuments that glorify the 
recent battle-fields ; and to retain, by painting 
inscriptions that once were pencilled, an enduring 
memory of the men who have hallowed the land 
with their blood. This labour of love we added 
to the work of our Enquiry Department before 
the Army was ready to undertake it — ' a noble 
aspiration,' as General Joffre described it in 
conversation not long ago. 

In order that the whole ground upon which 

B 2 



52 WAR PICTURES 

British troops had operated might be covered 
as thoroughly as possible, we divided it into two 
large areas. The northern portion was searched 
and cared for by one of the Red Cross Mobile 
Ambulance units, under Major Fabian Ware. 
At considerable personal risk, he and his intrepid 
staff have reached many a burial place, in con- 
secrated ground or outside of it, and have erected 
crosses each with a metal tablet bearing the name 
and regiment of him who lies beneath. The 
southern district, between the Marne and the 
Aisne, was assigned to me and my colleagues. 
Our task was less dangerous to life and limb, 
but in some ways it was the more difficult. It 
involved searching a large part of the area covered 
first by the retirement in August and then by 
the advance to the Aisne in September. The 
district was large and the sources of information 
were few when we began our work, for the villagers 
and local authorities had for the most part fled 
from their homes before the German invasion, 
and only lately have they returned. Still, by 
quartering the ground thoroughly, and by patient 
catechism on repeated visits to the same localities, 
we were able to glean a great deal of definite 
information ; hundreds of graves have been re- 



OUR NOBLE DEAD 53 

corded and marked, crosses replaced, memorial 
inscriptions written or renewed. It is not yet 
possible to say that the bodies in all the graves 
have been identified, for in many of them large 
numbers of soldiers' bodies have been buried 
together : as for instance in a certain forest, where 
we found ninety lying together in one large pit, 
seventeen in a churchyard, and ten by a road- 
side. They had been buried by the Germans 
after desperate and hurried engagements ; in 
many cases we could trace the soldier by his 
pocket-book or disc, but in a number of instances 
neither of these means of identification could be 
found. Of the exhumations which, in November 
1914, we were occasionally allowed to perform, 
I prefer to say nothing except that they were 
carried out most reverently by the local authorities 
in our presence and, after the necessary examin- 
ations had been made, the bodies were re-interred, 
an English Burial Service was read over them, 
the graves were marked with crosses, and covered 
by the villagers with wreaths and flowers. 

Gloomy as this work was of necessity, yet it 
brought us into contact with the most charming 
side of the French nature, whose sympathy and 
consideration for our soldiers' tombs knows no 



54 WAE PICTURES 

bounds. At that time it was my business to 
take every precaution that when, in the course 
of ploughing operations, the bodies of British 
soldiers were found buried in the beet-root fields 
and other plains where they had fallen, they should 
be cared for and transferred to the nearest cemetery. 
It was a duty easy of fulfilment, for I received 
not only a promise from the Commander-in-Chief, 
General Joffre, that I should be informed when- 
ever such battle-fields were being cleared, but 
also a kind of circular letter from the Ministry 
of the Interior to the Prefets and Sous-Prefets 
of the area that concerned me, asking them to 
give me all possible help towards the performance 
of a difficult task. As an immediate result of 
such kindly intervention, it was possible, in the 
case of every village that I visited, to obtain from 
the Mayor a concession perpetuelle of ground 
in the cemetery to which our dead may be trans- 
ferred when the time comes that they may safely 
be removed from their present resting-places. 
These concessions were granted in the most 
willing and yet formal way, by resolutions couched 
in touching terms and passed unanimously by 
the local councils. Here let me add for the benefit 
of those, and they are not a few, who have expressed 



OUR NOBLE DEAD 55 

the ardent desire that their relatives should not 
be moved from the places where they fell, that 
this course, which is above all others preferable 
in theory, is impossible in practice : it is not safe 
for the health of the living, whose acres must 
be cleared against next year and whose water- 
supply must be kept pure. For this reason we 
are deeply grateful for the free gifts of plots in 
consecrated ground of which I have spoken ; 
the alternative would probably be some general 
scheme of incineration that would be painful to 
the hearts of many at home. 

But let us be grateful for more than this. 
In scores of churchyards I have seen splendid 
strong wooden or iron crosses that will last for 
a generation, erected by the rate-payers to the 
memory of our soldiers : the graves carefully 
tended and decked with wreaths, placed there by 
French Regiments that have served alongside 
our men, and with flowers renewed again and 
again the long winter through. It is worth re- 
marking here that, in all my long and numerous 
winter journeys through that large area, I never 
remember seeing flowers in any cottage windows 
or gardens, yet I cannot recall a single wayside 
grave upon which some kind heart had not placed 



56 WAR PICTURES 

a few fresh flowers to gladden it. Last Easter, 
I received a letter from a village schoolmaster, 
which expresses in words the spirit of all that 
I have seen in this connection ; after referring 
to other topics, he adds : 

' In France, according to our yearly custom 
in springtime, we dress [faire la toilette] the 
graves of those who are still dear to us, and on 
Palm Sunday we decorate them with flowers. 
I thought it would be nice to treat in the same 
way the graves of the British soldiers who fell 
fighting in our parish. So last week my wife 
attended to them, and yesterday she and many 
people from this village brought flowers in honour 
of your gallant fellow countrymen.' 

Then, what kindness we have received from 
the priesthood who willingly consent to allow 
clergy of another creed to conduct their own 
Burial Services in the village churchyards, from 
officers and men of the French Army who have 
brought us news of graves situated sometimes 
almost between the trenches ! Let it be said and 
remembered that there is nothing our Allies will 
not do to show their devotion to the memory of 
the passage of the British Army, a feeling that is 
only second to their passionate admiration for the 



OUR NOBLE DEAD 57 

courage and endurance of their own gallant troops. 
Now all this work of Graves Registration has been 
taken over by a Military Commission under the 
Adjutant- General, and to it the Red Cross Society 
has handed over all its documents. It is well 
that this should be so, for the Army can, of course, 
employ a larger staff and obtain wider facilities 
for search than could properly be granted to 
any body of non-combatants, however devoted. 
We have given up this branch of our work with 
sadness but with confidence, feeling sure that those 
who have now been chosen to continue and finish 
the task begun by us are animated by the same 
motives of inexpressible loyalty to the memory 
of our dead which impelled us in October of last 
year to add the function of a Graves Registration 
Office to the other sad labours of our Enquiry 
Department. 

I cannot close this chapter without some 
reference to a visit which I paid in Lent to the 
Bishop of Meaux, the old cathedral city on the 
Marne, the pivot upon which the chances of war 
swung round in favour of the Allies last September. 
I had attended a public meeting in Paris, at which 
his Lordship was the principal speaker, whose 
burning description of the Battle of the Marne 



58 WAE PICTURES 

created a deep impression upon all who heard it. 
After the Conference, he was good enough to 
invite me to Meaux and promised to take me over 
the battle-field himself. A few days afterwards, 
I drove out thither with Lord Elphinstone, who 
was at that time one of my colleagues and generally 
came with me on our expeditions into the military 
zone. We arrived at Meaux about eleven o'clock j 
it lies thirty miles east of Paris, and there at the 
west end door of the cathedral we saw the Bishop 
in his purple cassock and biretta talking to a group 
of the townsfolk, who seem to worship him on 
account of his magnificent conduct in the dark 
days. He showed us liis cathedral, the scene of 
some of Bossuet's greatest successes, the palace 
with its old-world garden laid out by Le Notre — 
but into these precincts he has not entered since 
the State took them from the Church in 1906 — 
and the many picturesque streets and buildings 
that combine to make Meaux one of the most 
charming cities of Old France. After luncheon 
we motored out into the country, guided by the 
Bishop's servant who had been taken prisoner 
for a while by the Germans. The trees that formed 
the avenue through which we drove towards 
Vareddes were blasted, cut down, withered, and 




MONSEIGNEUR EMMANUEL MARBEAU, BISHOP OF MEAUX 




THE CATHEDRAL, MEAUX 



OUR NOBLE DEAD 59 

riddled by shot and shell : the trenches on either 
side of the road were being cleared and rebuilt, 
but the houses and the farms must wait to be 
repaired till the young plasterers and carpenters 
and stone-masons come back from the War. We 
passed through several villages, scarred and seared 
and desolate ; no sign of life in the streets, except 
perhaps a mounted orderly or a military car going 
at full speed toward the Front ; for the young men 
were in the trenches, the old men and all the 
women were in the fields, the children were at 
school. And so up to the great plateau above 
the Marne, which is now a place of pilgrimage. 
There, as one stands upon the high road that 
runs across the battle-field, stretch wide hedgeless 
fields as far as the eye can see. No crop is there 
but a harvest of crosses, singly and in clusters, 
and tied to each a storm- tossed little tricolour 
flag that has been there since All Souls' Day. 
Do you want a vivid impression of the scene, of 
the piteous silence and solitude and sorrow that 
haunts us ? I cannot do better than offer a trans- 
lation of parts of a beautiful article written in a 
French newspaper by M. Henri Lavedan, who 
will, I hope, forgive me for the temerity of my 
effort : 



60 WAR PICTUEES 



The Soldier's Cross 

He was buried where he fell on the battle- 
field ; his comrades, with a few stout strokes 
from spade or pick-axe, had just time to hew his 
rugged grave whilst the enemy was advancing. 
And when they had covered his poor body with 
a few inches of dear native soil, as the cloak 
covers the shepherd who has earned his night's 
rest, they still looked for something to complete 
the grave. For ' something ' ; for a cross — the 
crowning ornament of the body's last habitation, 
without which all graves appear nameless caverns 
of despair. 

To make the cross they do the best they can, 
with whatever lies nearest to their hands. Twigs 
are broken from the tree or gathered ofi the 
ground — dumb \4ctims of the ' mitrailleuse ' — 
and are tied together with a string or a strap or 
a bit of wire : perhaps they find two pieces of an 
old box, or two splinters of a pahng, and nail these 
across one another ; anything, everything, has 
to ' make do.' That is why no two crosses 
in the blood-stained Valley of the Marne are 
like one another, each has its own features and 
its own poetry. Even the smallest one is great 
with dignity, whether it be of metal or of billow, 
black or white, strong or weak, capable of re- 
sisting all weathers or tottering and nearly van- 
quished by the winter wind. Some have been 
driven into the ground so surely that they stand 
no higher than a good tent-peg ; others are bending 
and insecure, as though the hand which planted 
them were fearful lest it should inflict vet another 



OIJR NOBLE DEAD 61 

wound upon the dead. For, remember, the soldiers 
are for the most part buried in their uniforms : 
there is not oak or pine wood suflS.cient to shroud 
the victims of 1914, nor are there carpenters 
enough to make their cofl&ns. 

You see now why it is that battle-crosses 
fill those who live amongst them with so much 
anxiety — for the H\nng even more than for the 
dead. Yesterday they were new, some of them 
almost robust ; but to-morrow, what and where 
will they be ? — the prey of the snow, and of the 
wind that blows from Germany. Can you not 
imagine them, scom'ged by the tempest, water- 
logged by the rains, their tired hmbs parted as 
they rot with the dead leaves that already almost 
hide them. Hourly they begin to droop before 
the storm ; the pencilled name and date are 
effaced by the tears of Heaven ; at last the cross 
falls, so silently that no sleeper is disturbed, and 
it is no more seen. 

Thence into Barcy, whose fine old village 
church suffered heavily from the German cannon, 
its spire torn by the shells, its nave and chancel 
but a heap of stones. Onward to Chambry and 
Neufmoutiers and ViUeroy, one long Via Dolorosa 
now, w^here constantly the Bishop stopped and 
recited the ' De Profundis ' before the soldiers' 
tombs, but which wiU be known hereafter as a 
Path of Glory when history records the gallantry 
of France at the Battle of the Marne. 



62 WAR PICTURES 

As the afternoon wore on, the children came 
out of school and the labourers returned from 
the fields. At each village where we stopped 
the Bishop was the object of charming demon- 
strations of affection from young and old. Imagine 
the contrast between the Valley of Sorrow, of 
which I have been writing, and the picture of 
this high-spirited Prince of the Church, walking 
down the roadway of stricken hamlets, a splendid 
figure in his purple attire, followed by merry 
children, greeted by smiling faces at the cottage 
doors, consoling these and encouraging those, 
scattering little medals of the Virgin among the 
boys and girls, giving rosaries to the men and 
women, and receiving the blessings of all. If ever 
a Bishop earned the gratitude of a whole diocese 
by strength of character and tenderness of soul, 
that high reward has been given in abundant 
measure to the well-beloved Bishop of Meaux. 



CHAPTER VI 

ON THE ROAD 

Red-tape — Passports and * Permis ' — ^Soldier Friends — ^Marching 
Along — Spy Stories — War in the Air — Men and Women under 
Fire — The Imperturbables 

What is there inherent in the nature of every 
War Office which, whether you call it red-tape 
or military discipline, seems to the uninitiated 
to clog the wheels of the coach whose passengers 
want to go forward with something approaching 
speed ? I know not; but if it should happen 
that the majority of the passengers are (as in 
England) civilians, who have an innate dislike 
both of discipline and red-tape, then I observe 
that ' official methods ' come in for even more 
than their share of criticism and blame. Even 
we who are serving the Red Cross abroad — ^not 
least in the interests of the military, be it re- 
membered — often find ourselves confronted by 
what appear to be unnecessary difficulties which 
accentuate the difference in war-time between 
professional soldiers and well-meanmg civilians. 

63 



64 WAR PICTURES 

But, since we find the same international machine 
dealing out even-handed measure to our Allies 
as to ourselves, we can only hope that it is all 
for the best, and recognise that, as we get to under- 
stand one another better, the mistrust, or whatever 
it is, gradually disappears. 

Here, for example, is a French doctor of re- 
nown, who requires for his mihtary hospital some 
particular surgical appliances and writes to head 
quarters for them. The reply comes back, ' Make 
your application on a printed form'; to which 
the doctor answers in a second letter that he 
has no such forms. The Office then enjoins him 
by post to apply for the said forms, which he 
does in letter No. 3. Whereupon he receives 
a further communication saying, ' Make your 
application on a printed form.' More in sorrow 
than in anger, he indites letter No. 4 and explains 
that he cannot apply upon a printed form until 
is provided with the same. The Office, unmoved, 
he continues the correspondence and tells him to 
write them a letter asking for a printed form upon 
which he can make his original request. This he 
does in letter No. 5, and waits patiently for a 
document upon which he can without irregularity 
apply for the papers necessary to enable him to 



ON THE EOAD 65 

apply for surgical instruments of which he is 
in urgent need. 

Or shall we give the prize for cautious ad- 
ministration to the Ofl&ce which appointed a 
certain gentleman to examine candidates anxious 
to serve as interpreters in the Army? The 
professor laboured for some months at the oar, 
until, being both eligible and keen, he thought 
that he would like to become an interpreter 
himself, and so he made the official application. 
To which the official answer was returned : ' We 
cannot entertain your request as you have not 
passed the qualifying examination.' 

I confess that I am reminded of these and 
many similar incidents when I reflect upon the 
endless and complicated preliminaries which now 
attend the comparatively simple operation of 
travelling from Paris to London or vice versa. 
We are not surprised exactly, for in war-time 
we know that extraordinary precautions must 
be taken, preferably at once. But neither do 
we feel that we are unreasonable in asking that 
rules once made for regulating and supervising 
the movements of passengers shall be adhered 
to for a definite period of time. I have kept 
no count of the various changes that have been 



66 WAR PICTUEES 

made, sometimes from day to day, on both sides 
of the Channel, in passport and laissez-fasser 
regulations ; but I shall always retain a pain- 
fully clear recollection of scenes at one port or 
the other, when passengers were forbidden to 
embark on or to leave the ship because their 
parchments lacked one of the several official 
stamps which are all necessary to-day (though 
fewer may have been required yesterday and more 
may be compulsory to-morrow) before one can 
land safely in England or in France. And when 
it comes to applying for a ' Permis de circuler ' 
in a motor-car from Paris to any part of France, 
except the south, then, believe me, the difficulties 
are almost insuperable and the chances of entering 
any part of the zone of military operations are 
practically nil. There is, of course, abundant 
reason for stern restrictions in this direction ; 
one only wishes that they had been sooner enforced. 
Even for our own work, of tracing graves, it 
took six weeks before the ' permits ' were forth- 
coming to pass us into the war-zone, and then 
only to visit specified districts as authorised by 
the General-in-command of this or that army. 

Having received the much-coveted document, 
the coast is clear ' on paper.' As long as we adhere 



ON THE KOAD 67 

carefully to the routes prescribed there is no 
more trouble, unless we have a chauffeur who 
scorns regulations and does not keep a sharp 
look-out for or tries to rush the guards posted 
at unexpected places along the road. In that 
case the whiz of a bullet or, if time permits, 
a prod with a bayonet is the not unmerited re- 
ward, which brings the driver swiftly to his senses, 
and he is more careful in the future. In some 
places, to make the matter of examination of 
permits quite sure, the sentry is assisted by the 
erection of barricades, consisting of wagons or 
trees so drawn across the road that one must 
thread one's way carefully through them. These 
are particularly awkward to negotiate at night 
when there is little or no light, except now and 
then a dim stable -lantern, to warn us of their 
presence. The sentries themselves are generally 
dehghtful, oldish men who are past the age for 
the trenches. They are genuinely glad to pass 
the time of day with anybody — especially on 
the unfrequented roads — and the examination 
of a permit containing English names and 
adorned (?) with English photographs becomes a 
positive diversion. Of course, traveUing in a con- 
script country, one never knows whom one may 

f2 



68 WAE PICTUEES 

meet clothed in the homely, but very pictur- 
esque, uniform of a French infantry private. 
Once, for example, crossing a pontoon bridge — the 
temporary substitute for a stone one that had 
been blown up — I met a sculptor-friend who 
was guarding the passage ; on another occasion 
I found an old acquaintance in journalism, and 
elsewhere a professor of French whom I had 
formerly met, I think, in Leeds. But whoever 
they are, known or unknown, these sentries are 
charming people, engaged on the dullest, though 
the most necessary, of occupations — guarding 
the roads and bridges of the country ; I some- 
times wonder whether we Englishmen, when 
National Service comes, will face the irksome 
duties of patriotism as uncomplainingly as do 
our French Allies. 

Leaving the sentries, we drive northward 
through village after village, over roads that 
English motorists have often travelled and praised 
so much. I have used them frequently in war- 
time and praise them still ; though they have 
been subjected to the highest of trials — ^namely, 
the passage of the troops and of the heaviest kinds 
of transport for weeks and months — they have 
stood the strain wonderfully and are still amazingly 



■ 


B^^ ^ ^fTJ 


■^^^#[g^«r^i^^^^^n^^K Vm^' 






^Mj 




fV ^W^'Mp 



AN OLD SOLDIER 

By IIob?:rt Noik 
(Reproduced by kind permission of the Artist) 



ON THE ROAD 69 

good. I feel that I know every inch of them now, 
to Rouen or Boulogne, whether by road or rail : 
every village is a familiar friend, every culvert 
and level- crossing a familiar enemy. I have 
driven over them in snow-blizzards, in torrential 
rain, and in brilliant summer weather ; when 
the trees were bare, or white with blossom ; when 
we never met a living soul for miles, and when 
our course was so clogged with troops and convoys 
that it was impossible to get along. There is 
something very stimulating in seeing French 
reserve regiments marching up to the Front, with 
a gait quite different from the athletic swing of 
British troops bound on the same grim errand. 
I notice no elasticity, no ' step ' in the masses 
that I have seen moving forward, but a dogged 
endurance combined with unconquerable good 
humour, as company after company, bearded, 
whiskered, long blue-coated and laden with pots 
and pans, bread, bottles and accoutrements, plods 
casually along — ^now singing, now whistling camp 
songs, and always greeting a khaki uniform with 
a merry salutation in French or, quite remarkably 
often, in excellent English. Every time I meet 
them I am, of course, reminded of Detaille's 
great pictures ; just as, when I see them singly 



70 WAR PICTURES 

or in little groups working or wandering in 
the leafy forests — their blue tunics and crimson 
trousers standing out from a background of 
autumn tints or fresh spring green — I feel that 
I myself am sauntering through a gallery of 
Meissonier sketches. These are the men whose 
' troubles,' so for as trenches and shell-fire are 
concerned, are in front of them; but they have 
already had their adventures. A couple of them 
caught a spy the other night, driving a sham 
ambulance-car towards an important railway 
bridge, along a road which was closed to every- 
body. There were no stretchers inside the waggon, 
which was empty but for one occupant and a 
certain quantity of explosives. From what they 
told me I gather that these gentry are no longer 
' on the road.' Elsewhere I heard of a so-called 
Belgian refugee ' child,' who had been clothed, 
fed, and petted by a soft-hearted motherly old 
French peasant. He was as the apple of her eye, 
' gentle, beautiful, and trusting,' until she had 
occasion to look for something in the little cup- 
board where the darling kept his clothes and 
she found it locked. The child firmly declined 
to give up the key, so the cupboard was broken 
open and papers were discovered which led the 



ON THE EOAD 71 

infant from the nursery to the gaol. There 
must be quite a number of these precocious young 
rascals in the service of the enemy. I read a 
story the other day, in a letter from a French 
officer, of the adventure of a ' chocolate soldier ' : 

He stayed with us for weeks — a fair-haired, 
timid little urchin about fifteen years old, who 
limped after us as we left barracks for the Front. 
The kid with the white wheelbarrow became 
the friend of the regiment. Whenever we halted 
he uncovered his wares and sold cakes and chocolate 
to the men, replenishing liis stock in the towns 
and villages through wliich we marched. 

At last we got news that we were approaching 
the German lines, and so we advised our young 
friend to be off, as things were getting too hot 
for a child. To our surprise he began to cry. 

' Where shall I go to ? Oh ! do keep me with 
you ; I shan't be frightened,' he sobbed. And 
his tears so moved us that we let him remain. 

Our first section advanced to its appointed 
place, a hollow in a hillside ; we dug a trench and 
waited for the night. 

* Where is the chocolate soldier ? ' I asked. 

He and his barrow were nowhere to be seen, 
but nobody had time to think much about him 
then. At midnight a perfect storm of shells 
burst above our trenches — ^and we knew we were 
discovered. Of course we retired a bit, but the 
enemy found us again with his guns in a quarter 
of an hour. It was maddening. 

' Look behind you, sir,' said one of my men, 



72 WAR PICTURES 

as he pointed to a little white object on the next 
ridge. There, by the light of the full moon, I 
saw the little white wheelbarrow — and then we 
understood. Off went a patrol after it and flung 
it into a ditch. There was no more shelUng 
that night, but the fair-haired juvenile spy (who 
escaped in the darkness) had cost us four of our 
best men. 

This young criminal had only copied, and 
improved upon, the example of his elder who gave 
a great deal of trouble at one time with a flock 
of sheep which he herded carefully in a certain 
direction and, by the clouds of dust which they 
made, indicated the exact line of the French 
guns ; he was fortunately detected with his ear 
to a suspicious telephone, and his sheep are now 
tended by another shepherd. 

But I must pass on to other incidents of the 
road which never wearies me, for it is never the 
same for two successive journeys. At Beauvais, 
which contains two of the most interesting churches 
in France, I was sitting in a cafe one bright winter 
morning, half -frozen with the cold after a two 
hours' drive from Paris, when, as in a moment, 
the whole market-place was filled with upturned 
faces peering into the sky. Intense excitement 
was in the air, and I ran out to share it. It was 



ON THE ROAD 73 

caused by an aeroplane chase or fight, thousands 
of feet above us, between a Frenclinian and a 
* Taube,' the most graceful, if not quite the most 
thriUing, spectacle that modern warfare provides. 
I have seen many such extraordinary combats 
since — ^they can never cease to be extraordinary 
to people of my generation — but never with quite 
the same uncontrollable excitement as that which 
accompanied my first experience of an air-fight. 
All fear, all curiosity as to whether bombs would fall 
upon us, was swallowed up in the fever of watching 
these two large birds circling and swerving, plunging 
and pursuing, attacking and eluding, until they 
passed out of our sight into the clouds beyond. 

I wonder when the paean in praise of airmen 
will be written : of poor young Warneford whose 
heroic exploit filled the world with his name, 
and whose cofiin, covered with flowers, I saw 
at Versailles, only two days after hearing him 
acclaimed by all the diners in a large restaurant in 
Paris ; of Jean de Castellane, the intrepid French 
observer, who, lying at full length in his machine, 
held some loose part of the motor together with 
his feet for eighty kilometres as his pilot bore 
him safely over the enemy lines amid a storm 
of shells ; of the succession of gallant bands of 



74 WAE PICTURES 

Allies in the air and their wonderful deeds of 
daring, from heights to which no warrior in the 
long history of world-warfare has ever before 
ascended and at risks and perils uncontemplated 
hitherto even by the bravest of the brave ! What 
pigmies we groundlings feel when we see, when 
we read of, these glorious feats of valour so far 
surpassing anything that we ourselves can hope 
to attain ! 

Another and a very decided impression is 
left upon my mind by a visit to Amiens when 
first I heard the sound of the cannon— not very 
distant but continuous. Shall I confess to feehng 
first of all the satisfaction of an unworthy curiosity 
— shared, I know, by millions of others who long 
to hear, if only once, the sound of which they 
have read so much ? At eight or ten miles it gives 
one the impression of heavily-padded doors bang- 
ing incessantly all over a large hotel. But this 
feeling of curiosity satisfied is swiftly replaced by 
the truer emotion that brings with it the grim 
meaning of every one of those far-ofi explosions : 
the intention to kill, the bursting of shells in 
trenches and in villages, the death or maiming 
of friends or foes by the score and by the hundred, 
the devastation of property, the desolation of 



ON THE ROAD 75 

homes. That is the haunting sensation which finally 
grips you and never loosens its hold even whilst 
you are only listening to the distant voice of fate. 
Nearer the line these sounds are too familiar ; 
men and women are too busy or too tired to 
analyse their feelings or to pay more attention to 
shells than is necessary to avoid them, if possible. 
It is remarkable to note how quickly even new 
arrivals become accustomed to the din and the 
danger : I do not mean to say that they ever 
like it, but it does not prevent them eating or 
sleeping or smoking or working. This always 
impresses me when I observe the daily demeanour 
of the rank and file of the new Army whose earlier 
professions were seldom such as to fit men (one 
would say) for the scenes and scent of war. But 
they are composed of such splendid stuff that 
they step into their new lives ' as to the manner 
born' and, after a few days, the explosion of a 
' Black Maria ' is scarcely more disturbing to them 
than once was the sound of Bow Bells. So, too, 
with the gallant women who are nursing at the 
Front ; the religious communities whose lives have 
hitherto been passed in a tranquil atmosphere of soli- 
tude and prayer, the ladies whose names were once 
associated with all that was brightest in London 



76 WAR PICTURES 

Society; the authoresses and actresses and artists 
who have gladly given up their careers to work 
wherever they are wanted — all these and hundreds 
of others serving loyally under the R.A.M.C, 
whose matrons and sisters and nurses are one and 
all magnificent, and are doing their hospital duty 
under bombardment as quietly and calmly as if 
they were in the wards at St. Thomas's or Guy's. 
Nor are the non-combatant men any less remark- 
able than their fellows for that sang-froid which 
seems to come more by instinct than by training : 
men who have never seen suffering beyond the 
doors of their own homes are now hourly engaged 
as stretcher-bearers to and from the trenches, 
and are in imminent danger of death ; men who 
have never before needed to employ their talents 
as chauffeurs for purposes less pleasurable than 
joy-rides through England, are now driving ambu- 
lances daily into Ypres and other Flemish villages 
in flames, risking annihilation at every corner, 
to rescue and to save. Every one of these names, 
when known, must be added to the honour roll of 
Britain's glory. Two stories that have reached 
me seem to sum up all that can be written about 
the inexplicable quality known as British ' phlegm.' 
Mr. Kennerley Rumford, whose Red Cross work 
is no less admirable than his singing, told me that 



ON THE EOAD 77 

on one occasion he was taken into an observation 
post from whicli he could see both German and 
English trenches and mark the wonderful accuracy 
of the shell-fire. Whilst his eyes were riveted 
upon the scene before him, he suddenly started 
at the sound of a full-throated cheer which he 
thought proceeded from the enemy lines. Turning 
to his companion he asked if the cheering meant 
that our lines had been pierced. 

' Oh no,' replied his friend, ' not at all ; 
just look out of that peep-hole on the right.' 

He looked and saw — a football match in full 
swing well within range of shells ! The cheering 
came from a large number of spectators elated 
because their side had just scored a goal ! 

The other story is told with genuine pride 
and admiration all down the French lines. A 
town, in which the Prince of Wales happened to 
be billeted, was receiving a considerable amount 
of attention from the German guns. Things 
became so warm that the kind-hearted landlord 
of the Prince's lodgings went into the latter's 
room and said, very decidedly : ' Le prince doit 
partir d'ici immediatement.' 

His Eoyal Highness, without interrupting the 
work upon wliich he was engaged, quietly replied : 
* Le Prince n'a pas peur.' 



CHAPTER VII 

SELF-EXAMINATION 

* As Others see Us ' — ^The Martian's Report — Pleasure and Pessimism 
— The Vast Majority — A Spirit of Sacrifice — External Illusions 
— The Zouaves on Shirkers 

No question put to me by my Frencli friends 
perplexes me nearly so much as one which I put 
to myself on the rare occasions when I find myself 
in London : ' How much do the people of Great 
Britain care about the War ? ' 

We are a people who are not supposed to care 
about praise or criticism from our Continental 
neighbours, and we are (or were) supposed to take 
victory or defeat with comparative equanimity. 
How true is all this now ? Let us examine the 
convenient visitor from Mars who arrives among 
us in the midst of this national struggle for national 
existence. What report will he write for the con- 
sideration of his government in another sphere ? 
First of all, I suppose, having studied the back 
numbers of our morning and evening papers, 
he will be duly impressed by the unity of our 

78 



SELF-EXAMINATION 79 

people and its Parliament, and by the heroism 
and infinite power of endurance in all ranks of 
the regular Army and Navy. He will marvel 
at the quite unexpected efficiency of our Terri- 
torials, as well he may, and will note the glorious 
response from all classes of the community to 
His Majesty's appeal for men. But perhaps 
our visitor will not be so much overwhelmed as 
we are ourselves by what he sees in the matter 
of military training ; he will write in his diary : 
' After all, they admit that this war is nothing 
less than a fight to the death — death or life for a 
great Empire — so I can see nothing surprisingly 
praiseworthy in the fact that a large number 
of young men, and a great many old ones, are 
now banded together to save the Empire which 
has done everything for them.' If he can be 
persuaded to talk at all freely, the Martian will 
probably say, when asked to lecture at the Queen's 
Hall upon his ' impressions,' that, taken as a 
nation, we in Great Britain are either childishly 
ignorant of what our Empire means or else curiously 
callous as to its fate. I seem to hear him continue : 
' It is not for me, a mere pilgrim from a neigh- 
bouring planet, to instruct you, to whom it belongs 
by inheritance, in the worth of the British Empire 



80 WAE PICTUEES 

and of the priceless part which it has played 
in the civilisation of the world. There is no 
system of decent government which is not in 
your debt for its parentage ; no dark spot upon 
the earth that has cried to you in vain for succour ; 
no path of science or art or discovery in which 
you were not pioneers ; no country in which 
the lamp of true liberty has been held higher 
or has shined more brightly than in your own. 
The homes of England and her domestic life 
are the world's pattern ; the courage of her 
ancestors to defend wife and child from all aggres- 
sion is traditional in every language. Are you 
not taught these things in your schools ? [Cries 
of ' No ! '] Do you not thank God for them, and 
pray night and morning that you may continue 
in the footsteps of your forefathers ? [Eenewed 
cries of ' No ! '] Are you not proud of your match- 
less heritage ? [Shouts of ' Good old England ! '] 
Ah ! now I see why you expect all created things 
to gasp with astonishment because three million 
of you actually volunteer to defend your Empire 
and your homes. It is because you don't know 
either their price or their value ; you have only 
learnt to live on the name of England, not to 
die for it. Teachers of young England — priest, 



SELF-EXAMINATION 81 

parent and professor alike — it is you who are 
to blame to-day ; for, if you had taught aright, 
instead of three, all the millions that make the 
manhood of England would be entrained to-day 
either for an army at the Front or for an arsenal 
at the rear.' 

Let us walk with our visitor down Regent Street 
and through Whitehall to Westminster and gather 
his impressions as we go. ' Look at this poster,' he 
exclaims : ' " Has your best boy joined the colours ? " 
— and on that taxi, " Why not join the Army ? " 
— and at all those pictures on the walls. These 
are kindergarten lessons for a nation in the 
nursery of a parvenu, not for a race upon whose 
Empire we are told that the sun never sets.' 
We stop at Regent Circus where a dozen news- 
sheets are exhibited : ' Captain Coe's finals ' 
upon one, ' Brides in the Bath ' upon another, 
' Desperate fighting in Flanders ' upon the third. 
We reach the House of Commons ; we find seats 
under the gallery, we hear some admirable speeches, 
and some execrable questions which can give 
information and consolation to none but our 
enemies. Our friend remarks : ' If I were the 
Secretary of State for War, I should give a com- 
mission to every Member of Parliament and second 



82 WAR PICTUEES 

him for service at Westminster. If his conduct 
interfered with the conduct of the War he would 
be court-martialled and punished on the spot.' 
In the outer lobby we meet a number of men who 
have just left a Minister's room, and we learn that 
a coal strike has been averted in one part of 
the country, whilst in another part the operatives 
decline to take their share in some national move- 
ment for the safety of their native land. The 
Martian notes all these extraordinary happenings 
in his book, with a view to reporting them here- 
after to his chief, and finishes the day by an hour's 
talk at the Club with men of all professions who 
are alternately critical and depressed at the 
condition of things at the Front, but who never- 
theless go off to dinner at the usual hour in a 
restaurant where there is a good orchestra playing 
Hungarian dances ' to cheer us up.' 

' How much do the people of Great Britain 
care about the War ? ' That is the question 
which I feel that I must answer to myself. Upon 
the one hand I have all the evidence of ears 
and eyes that have heard and seen the things 
which I have just related. These point to one 
conclusion : that there is in Great Britain a 
certain class, or group of classes, which has not 



SELF-EXAMINATION 83 

yet appreciated the full meaning of a life-and- 
death struggle, of the appalling difference between 
national existence and national extinction : their 
circumstances are still too comfortable for them 
to believe it, their imagination too limited for 
them to grasp it. When they have paid up their 
increased taxation and settled their weekly house- 
bills they feel they have done all that they can 
do ; there is something spiritual lacking in them. 
Would they strike, for example, for higher wages 
if they knew and believed that upon the issue 
of this war depends the answer to the question 
whether or not they shall in the future have any 
wages at all ? Would they hesitate to join the 
national movement for the mobilisation of industry 
if they reaUsed that by so doing they would 
enfeeble the sword-arm of our country, and so 
become associates with the enemy in their murder- 
ous raids upon the defenceless by sea and land ? 
Others there are whose lot in life has become 
comparatively easy, perhaps after a hard struggle, 
and who say, when asked to join a regiment, 
' I'll wait a bit ; I'll come when I am fetched.' 
I cannot and will not blame them, for they have 
never been taught (as have the Germans and 
the French) what the Motherland means ; if 

G 2 



84 WAR PICTURES 

they had learnt this they would not wait to be 
* asked,' still less to be ' fetched,' to fight for 
her whose children they are. Others, again, 
the pessimists (Jies poltrons de Farrier e, as the 
French so rightly call them) swell the group who 
give the false impression abroad that England 
is not wholly in earnest. Sometimes they write 
in the newspapers, sometimes they preach sermons, 
and they abound in club-land. Whatever they 
do and wherever they are, they are a danger and 
ought to be suppressed ; we have quite enough 
serious and real grounds for anxiety in this war 
to entitle us to ask for protection against the 
alarms and inventions and miscliievous forebodings 
of such useless people. They, too, are bound in 
honour to ask themselves this question, whilst 
the sons and husbands of their friends are falhng 
every day, ' Are my prophecies and criticisms 
helping to win this war for my country ? ' If 
not, then whilst others are holding the trenches 
let them hold their tongues. We have only to 
add to the above catalogue the small class of 
heartless and inveterate pleasure-seekers, who 
would bring as much discredit on any army that 
they tried to enter as they do on the country 
that wiU disown them, to conclude the number 



SELF-EXAMINATION 85 

of those who make it appear that Great Britain 
is not serious enough in this war. 

On the other hand there are the silent millions 
whose spiritual conception of a war for existence 
is complete. It may have come through instinct 
or sorrow or knowledge, but it compels them 
to make a whole-hearted sacrifice of themselves, 
their lives, and their fortunes until the War is 
over. They are the backbone of the country ; 
their hearts are mourning for their dead, but they 
know no pessimism ; though their homes are 
desolate, and their domestic life is wrecked, they 
spend their days in organising relief for sufferers at 
home or abroad ; their substantial incomes are re- 
duced to a shadow upon which they are cheerfully 
resigned to live. Rich and poor are of the same 
estate now, bearing one another's burdens as 
equal heritors of misery and hope. It is with 
these, drawn by the hundred thousand from every 
class in the social scale, that the enemy must 
reckon when counting up his chances of out- 
lasting us ; with these, whose numbers and in- 
spiring influence increase as the power of the 
self-satisfied and the morbid passes. Often enough 
already has Germany been deceived by outward 
signs and portents in our domestic life, to which 



86 WAR PICTURES 

her counsellors have attached a wholly erroneous 
significance — let the instance of possible civil 
war in Ulster last July stand for a warning and 
an example. And let our Allies take the same 
lesson to heart : the foundations of our national 
endurance do not rest upon the evidence of news- 
sheets or placards, or upon the untimely dis- 
affection of a well-defined class here and there, 
but rather upon the grim and irresistible deter- 
mination of the vast majority of our fellow country- 
men and women to win this war with and for 
our friends, and to have done with a world-danger 
once and for all. I come, then, to this definite 
conclusion that, in spite of most depressing appear- 
ances to the contrary, our people are in desperate 
earnest ; and every day I seem to notice a growing 
impatience with dilettantism and inefficiency in 
high places, which emboldens us to expect yet 
greater things of our country as the War proceeds. 
But until we realise that, in this imperfect 
world, there will always be some people ready 
to judge a whole nation by the eccentricities 
(or worse) of a minority, we must be prepared 
for the criticism that England is not serious. 
Our only chance of escaping it, is, by example 
and precept, to reduce that minority to vanishing- 



SELF-EXAMINATION 87 

point. And even then we must admit, as I have 
said before, that the outward and visible signs 
of our inward and spiritual determination to 
win require a certain amount of explanation 
before foreigners can be expected to recognise 
them as satisfactory symbols. Let me illustrate 
what I mean : the German soldiers advance 
in close formation to certain death, chanting 
' Deutschland iiber alles ' ; the French strip and 
start for the enemy trenches with incomparable 
dash, singing the Marseillaise ; the British charge 
in the face of maxims and barbed wire shouting 
' Front seats, sixpence.' Again : we have all 
read the wonderful accounts, written home by 
French soldiers, of their thoughts and feelings 
when they lay wounded on the field of battle, 
simple letters inspired by love of country and 
family and home ; but, when a friend of mine 
in Ireland asked a wounded fellow countryman 
what he thought about before the stretcher arrived 
to pick him up, the Ulsterman replied : ' Sure, 
your Honour, I was thinking what a grand 
training it is for the great fight we shall have in 
Ireland when this is all over.' 

I am not sure that I could give to anyone, 
even to myself, any satisfactory explanation of 



88 WAR PICTUEES 

tMs curiously detached point of view, wliich is 
essentially British. It might be different if war 
were our staple national industry as it is in Germany ; 
it would certainly be different if our country were 
invaded, as are France and Belgium, and if the 
horrors of war glared through our cottage windows 
and fired the buildings in our ancient English 
towns ; but it is what it is — our soldiers' own 
particular mode of expression and thought, and 
nobody has yet said that it hinders them from 
fighting like lions. 

But, after all, such criticism as we receive 
from our good Allies across the Channel is as milk 
compared to the strong and bitter invective 
which they hurl in torrents at their own em- 
busques — the shirkers and wasters who decline, 
on some flimsy pretext or another which is just 
inside the law, to ' do their bit.' The other day 
I came across a letter written in one of the brilliant 
little broadsheets which are published at the 
Front. This appeared in the Chechia, the 'organ' 
of the First Zouaves, and was addressed from the 
trenches to an anonymous civilian friend who 
seems to have written complaining of the tedium 
of life nowadays in Paris ; for polished irony it 
is hard to beat : 



SELF-EXAMINATION 89 

Dear Old Man, — 

What can have happened to make you 
so chastened and cast down ; you of all people 
who used to be so cheery and full of fun ? Of 
course I know that life in Paris cannot be 
exactly a bed of roses, but, after all, you have 
stood it bravely for nearly a year, and have 
given us all an example of courage and en- 
durance and devotion which we admire from 
end to end of the fighting-line. Don't give up 
now and destroy all those feelings of respect 
which we cherish for you and of which you must 
be proud. 

Yes, times are hard, but not quite intolerable, 
are they ? What do you complain of ? They 
' have taken away the motor-buses ' from you ; 
so they have from us, as they aren't much use 
in the trenches. But why should you care ? 
You were always a splendid walker and I seem 
to remember that, when Paris was crawling with 
them, you used to say that you would rather 
go on foot than climb up into one of these ' infernal 
bathing-machines.' Then you tell me that there 
are so few plays to go to, that a glass of beer now 
costs a halfpenny more than it did last year, 
that the town is dreadfully dark at night, and 
that the Boulevards are full of soldiers in uniform. 

I am bound to say that we are better off than 
you in these respects. We have a number of 
dramas out here, full of the unexpected sometimes ; 
we get our share of wine and beer — now and then ; 
as for illumination at night-time that is amply 
provided by a sort of tacit understanding with 
our neighbours across the line ; but, like you, we 



90 WAR PICTURES 

too see a good many uniforms in the course of 
the day. Cheer up old fellow, your turn is coming, 
and you will soon be with us in the trenches, if 
only you will be patient : the War is not over yet, 
by any means. 

But even if you are compelled to stay at home 
all the time, console yourself with the thought 
of how we shall thank you for your doggedness 
when we get home, and how you will enjoy the 
fruits of victory ! Our first duty should be to 
pay you an official visit of thanks ; but I know 
you will come out to meet us, and march in front 
of us through the gates of the city ; you will 
escort us through the town and spoil us, but you 
won't let fall a syllable about your own courage, 
for heroes are always modest. On the contrary, 
you will pretend that it is we who have won the 
War and have suffered, and you will thank us. 
But it won't do, old boy ; you are a better fellow 
than you would have us believe, and I am sure 
that, however long the War may last, you, at 
least, will remain at your post in Paris till the 
end. 

Ever yours, 

* * * 
The truth is that no system and no nation 
is as perfect as it thinks it is, and the supreme test 
of war reveals flaws, where least they were expected, 
to those from whom we would have wished par- 
ticularly to hide them. But, if there is any conso- 
lation to be derived from observing the deficiencies 
of our neighbours whilst smarting under the lash 



SELF-EXAMINATION 91 

of exposure ourselves, that at least is to be 
had for the asking. The trail of politicians, 
the bane of the wastrel, the danger of the self- 
complacent — these are maladies in every country, 
they are the monopoly of none. Victory will 
belong to the side which is the quickest to purge 
itself of such grievous ills, for wars are won by 
courage, cannon, and discipline ; and the greatest 
of these is discipline. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE EAVAGE OF WAK 

Chantilly and Senlis — A Pilgrimage of Passion — * Souvenirs ' — 
The Prince at Bethisy — Nery — In the Forest — Villers-Cotterets 
— ^A Woodland Cemetery — Dead Letters 

I HAVE already said that from almost the beginning 
of the War until the summer of 1915, my work 
led me constantly into the zone of the Armies 
and sometimes to the battle-field itself. I suppose 
we must have visited nearly two hundred villages 
in the course of our expeditions through the area 
that lies between the rivers Marne and Aisne, 
when we were searching for our soldiers' graves. 
In this way one came across much that gave a 
steady insight into the feelings of the people, 
both military and civilian, as well as a striking 
picture of what invasion means. My first journey 
was to Senlis on a fine morning in autumn, and 
the road led through Chantilly, the Newmarket 
of France. Outside this prosperous little town 
we overtook an English trainer riding on his cob 
beside a string of race- horses coming home from 

92 



THE RAVAGE OF WAR 93 

exercise. ' Fine day,' said he, ' the guns began 
playing early this morning ; you can hear them 
quite plainly now.' That was a characteristically 
British phrase, ' guns . . . playing ' ; but we 
could certainly hear them booming across the 
clear frosty distance. What a strange impression, 
an odd clashing of ideas : race- horses and artillery 
in action ! The whole scene at Chantilly was 
so calm and serene that it was almost impossible 
to realise that the Germans had actually been 
there only six weeks before. It was much less 
difficult when, eight kilometres farther on, we 
reached the httle town of Senlis which had suffered 
so terribly from a three days' occupation by the 
Huns that the main street seemed a replica in 
miniature of Messina directly after the earth- 
quake. That a city, however beautiful and 
prosperous, can be laid waste in a moment by a 
convulsion of nature is bad and sad enough; 
but, to me at least, the prospect of Messina 
was not so indescribably shocking as this, my 
first evidence of uncivilised war. The impression 
deepened as one talked with the inhabitants who 
were beginning to start life afresh in their own 
homes. Some had been held as hostages, others 
tried for their lives by a sort of sham court-martial 



94 WAR PICTURES 

— all had been terrified and horror-stricken 
by the brutal methods of brigandage of which 
they had been the innocent victims. Imagine 
Bury St. Edmunds, let us say, treated as the 
Germans served Senlis : both towns have had 
shells dropped in the market-place, but that 
was only the beginning of trouble for Senlis. 
The station was burnt to the ground ; its prin- 
cipal street contained some 150 houses, of which 
105 were deliberately set fire to and destroyed ; the 
shops were plundered, the cellars ransacked ; the 
mayor deUberately murdered under the pretence 
of a military execution, and six working-men 
were assassinated — to say nothing of many who 
were shot in the streets as they ran to protect 
their families from a German carnival of lust 
and hate. None cared to speak of these things 
above a whisper; but it was an honour to meet 
M. Mader, the gallant old employe in the Maison 
Fevrier, who, by his unbending attitude and 
knowledge of German, saved himself and six 
others from the death to which they had been 
condemned ; and to have speech with the famous 
Cure of Senlis, whose rare example of courage and 
devotion inspired his flock and impressed his 
foes. He showed us over his famous church 



THE EAVAGB OF WAR 95 

and pointed out the damage done by the shells 
to its towers — happily not beyond repair. I 
asked him where he was while the bombardment 
was going on. He said : ' Up in the belfry watching 
it, so that I could indicate to my parishioners 
the safest road for flight when necessary. I had 
the keys of the church in my pocket lest any 
should say that there were guns mounted on 
the towers. But they were bad shots, monsieur,' 
he added with a twinkle, ' luckily for me.' 

That night I slept in the Hotel du Grand Cerf, 
the one building of any size left standing in the 
main street, because it made a very comfortable 
head quarters for the General of the Division 
responsible for these atrocities. On each bedroom 
door and on the walls the names of various oflB.cers 
were scrawled in red chalk ; they had broken 
into the wine-cellars and stolen the food and 
household linen, leaving behind them a packet 
of I U papers, which is all the payment that 
the unfortunate landlady is ever likely to see. 
The next morning we were ofi betimes, but not 
too early to be accosted by a youth anxious to 
sell us ' war souvenirs ' in the shape of bits of 
shell and other doubtful oddments. I am thank- 
ful to say that this trade is almost a thing of 



96 WAR PICTURES 

the past, for it has been made a military ofience, 
I believe, to traffic in these casual spoils of war. 
People who were in Paris directly after the battle 
of the Marne tell me that in those days parties 
were made up to wander over the fields ' curio- 
hunting ' — a morbid and revolting sport. It is 





^4. ys^A^f-^^ 






/«'^^**W/^ 





one thing to be the receiver of honourable trophies 
of war taken from the enemy by a friend, but 
quite another to barter for helmets and swords 
and guns— as though one could ever be proud of 
purchases stained with so much of our country's 
blood ; the mere sight of such things, so acquired, 
in a shop or a drawing-room at home is an insult 
to our dead, and makes me doubtful whether 



THE RAVAGE OF WAR 97 

their possessors will ever realise anything of the 
hideousness of war until it beats against their 
own doors. I remember one occasion when, in a 
country village that had been the scene of carnage, 
I heard a lady ask one of the inhabitants if he 
thought he could get her a German helmet as a 
' souvenir ' to take home to her little boy ! Never 
shall I forget his look of astonishment at such a 
request : his house had been seized and occupied 
by the enemy and, after the engagement, two 
helmets had been left behind, and here was some- 
body asking him for a ' souvenir.' With great 
readiness and frigid politeness he produced them, 
saying : ' Prenez, madame, lequel vous voulez de 
ces converts de cochon.' Now, for all I know, 
this horror is the ornament of a nursery or is 
brought out to be played with on Sundays. There 
is only one collection of such things — besides 
that in the * Invalides ' — for which I have any 
respect. It is a very imposing trophy in the 
Hotel Crillon in Paris, composed of all sorts of 
booty taken from the enemy by old employes 
of the hotel who are now fighting with the colours 
and exhibited for the benefit of the families they 
have left behind. 

Beyond Senlis, in the direction of Compiegne, 



98 WAR PICTURES 

is a group of picturesquely situated villages, in 
all oi whose cemeteries there are monuments 
of our brave dead who have fallen in the course 
of the retreat to the Marne. At Bethisy St. 
Martin we found the villagers still in a fever of 
excitement over the recent visit of the Prince 
of Wales, who had gone there to decorate some 
doctors and nurses who had tended our soldiers 
last September. We lunched in a village inn 
with one of the decores, who was loud in praise 
of the manner in which the Prince had conducted 
the little ceremony, and the schoolchildren showed 
us the flags with which they had been provided 
for the festival. Above Bethisy there is a high 
hill where stands the farm of St. Cluse . We wanted 
to get up there to see some graves, and the way 
was shown us by a charming young girl, the 
daughter of the schoolmaster I think, who had 
been in England when war broke out, but got 
back to her village in time to see the Germans 
in it. With her we climbed the hill, which was 
a steep ploughed field at the time, and reached 
the graves at the summit. There we saw a sight, 
by no means rare but very grateful to British 
eyes, which always gives me a thrill — ^three French 
privates in uniform, laying flowers upon these 





^y™^ 



4^ 




r' 



THE SOLDIEE's CEOSS 



THE RAVAGE OF WAR 99 

two lonely graves, saying a little prayer, then 
quietly saluting and going away. They were at 
first quite shy at being surprised in this touching 
act of comradeship, explaining that they were 
natives of one of the villages below and, as they 
were home for a few hours' leave, they seized the 
first opportunity of paying their respects to the 
memory of men who had died for them in their 
parish. 

Not far from here is the village of Nery, through 
which I have passed several times. It consists 
of one long street with a sugar refinery at the 
far end of it, and was the scene of desperate 
fighting at dawn on September 1, 1914, when the 
Germans, under cover of a heavy mist, crept 
up the hill and surprised two or three British 
regiments who were resting there. Our men 
were billeted about in the farms and with the 
villagers ; they were just rising to begin the 
day's work when it was discovered that a greatly 
superior force was upon them. The enemy- 
artillery opened fire from a mile off, our cavalry 
rode out and captured the battery from both 
flanks, men dashed into the street in shirt sleeves, 
many with shaving-soap on their faces, to find 
that the Germans were advancing behind the 

H 2 



100 WAR PICTUEE8 

usual screen of tliirty civilians with the Mayor 
of Nery at their head. It is very wonderful to 
hear him tell this story, and then to meet some 
of the men and women who had been forced 
to make a living shelter for a contemptible foe. 
The nerves of nearly all of them were completely 
shattered by this gruesome adventure, some were 
seriously ill, and a few, it is feared, will never 
recover ; but those with whom I spoke — especially 
a charming couple, M. and Mme. Nicolas — could 
not sufficiently praise the conduct of the British 
officers and men on that eventful morning. The 
unanimous opinion was that, if the Germans 
could have fought like our men, there would not 
have been one Englishman left. As it was, the 
German guns were destroyed, many prisoners 
were taken, the British dead were collected so 
far as possible and buried in the cemetery, and 
Nery remained for many days a hospital for 
wounded friend and foe alike. Madame Nicolas 
made a wonderful nurse ; her little house was 
full of British casualties upon whom she waited 
day and night until they could be moved. Now 
she makes herself responsible for the upkeep of 
the graves, and she has but one complaint— which 
I have often heard from other devoted French 



THE RAVAGE OF WAR 101 

women under similar circumstances : it is that 
she does not know the names of those whose 
last earthly homes she is tending as affectionately 
as though they were the tombs of her own children. 
One large grave which we opened contained 
twenty-one bodies : we were able to identify 
the four officers, but not the men whose discs, 
it was said, had been removed by some doctor 
in the Army Medical Service. Doubtless, there- 
fore, these names are known at the War Office ; 
but it would have been a better plan in this case, 
as in scores of others that came under my notice, 
to have left at the various ' mairies ' lists containing 
the names of those whose bodies we had placed 
in charge of kind-hearted Allies after we ourselves 
had left the neighbourhood. Such a procedure, 
besides being courteous and wise, would have 
had the further advantage of providing a duplicate 
list for guidance, in the event of anything untoward 
happening to the original or its possessor. 

From Nery it is not far to Compiegne where 
there was also a certain amount of fighting on 
September 1. There, too, our graves are kept 
in admirable order by the town authorities who 
have compiled a careful register of names at the 
Town Hall, where, by the way, I was fortunate 



102 WAR PICTURES 

enough to meet a casual visitor who told me that 
he was in correspondence with an Englishman 
in China whose brother's grave, under a tree 
by the roadside at Choisy-au-Bac, he had under- 
taken to protect. At every turn one comes across 
French people ready and anxious to help and 
console the relatives of our fallen ; it would 
surprise you if I could enumerate the number 
of village people I have met who either are or 
have been writing to English families about the 
last hours or the graves of their sons. Many 
most charming letters, often with photographs 
taken at the peasant's expense, have passed 
through my hands to be forwarded from these 
good Samaritans to England, where they have 
been received with the deepest gratitude. 

And now we follow the line of the British Army 
that retired from Compiegne through miles of 
forest upon Villers-Cotterets. The guns are very 
audible from here, as they boom across the river. 
But, in the solitude of the forest, what a picture 
of peace ! Here and there we drive through 
picturesque villages in sleepy hollows, and one 
charming scene after another passes before our 
eyes : the dragoons are watering their horses, the 
children stand open-mouthed as African troops 



THE EAVAGE OF WAR 103 

in strange attire ride lynx-eyed down the street, 
a dusty war-stained convoy of fifty hooded- wagons 
distributes its load of rations and then plods 
wearily on to the next town, two girls are kneeling 
in prayer before the large Crucifix at the entrance 
of the village, two infantry soldiers are lazily 
fishing in the stream by the mill. Here I meet 
an old priest who takes me into his church which, 
not long since, was hospital and mortuary at once ; 
he shows me the graves of thirteen British soldiers 
buried by the Germans outside the churchyard 
wall. Each grave is guarded by the outspread 
arms of a strong wooden cross, covered with flowers 
and honoured by large wreaths of metal flowers 
placed there by their French comrades in arms. 
Elsewhere, I interrupt the afternoon class of a 
village school to make some enquiries of the mistress 
who was imprisoned by the Germans during their 
stay in the neighbourhood and who still suffers from 
the effects of her treatment. She gives me the 
names of a wine-seller here and of a garde-champetre 
there who may be able to help me to more know- 
ledge, and an afternoon passes very quickly in 
patient conversation with these and the like who 
lived through those days of terror. These are 
the very people who, before the fighting in the 



104 WAR PICTURES 

Villers-Cotterets forest, gave our soldiers breakfast 
and with their own arms buried many of the same 
men on the same evening : their interest in and 
anecdotes of the men they knew afford ample 
evidence to the splendid behaviour of our troops 
on the march. It is almost with tears that they 
give me the identity discs, the soldiers' pocket- 
books, letters and other possible sources of identifi- 
cation for which I am looking : these things had 
become so dear to them. A blacksmith brings 
me a broken sword — I can trace its owner by 
the number on the blade and the name of the 
maker; another friend produces a staff -officer's 
cap and a pair of field glasses, another a saddle 
and a pair of spurs : all these are now restored 
either to the owners or to their families or to the 
War Office. As we get near to the town of Villers- 
Cotterets our guide begs us to leave the road and 
to follow him into the forest. He knows where the 
Germans buried the dead after the engagement: 
who should know it better ? — for was he not one of 
those prisoners to whom was allotted the awful 
task of collecting bodies all through the night and 
placing them in graves prepared for them by the 
soldiers ? There they are, within quite a small 
area, indicated only by little mounds of earth and. 



THE RAVAGE OF WAR 105 

upon the trees above them, by some German words 
written to show whether friend or foe is lying 
underneath. Round the largest of these mounds 
is a strong wooden railing upon which hang twenty 
wreaths of evergreens. Upon the cross at the 
head of the tomb is written : 

ICI REPOSENT 20 SOLDATS AnGLAIS 
DU 4:ME REGIMENT DES GuARDS, MORTS 
COURAGEUSEMENT A l'eNNEMI 

Sept. 1914. 

And upon the nearest tree I made out the following 
inscription, drawn up probably on the following 
day: 

hier ruhen umgefahr 20 ehrenvolle 
Englander 4:Th Guards. 

During a later examination, however, it was 
found that a far greater number than twenty had 
been buried at this spot ; so the grave was 
properly enlarged, a touching military funeral 
was provided by the officers billeted in the neigh- 
bourhood, prayers were read over the bodies by 
Anglican and Roman Catholic priests, and ' we 
left them alone in their glory.' 

At Villers- Cotter ets I was billeted for a couple 
of nights in very comfortable quarters over a 
grocer's shop, finding excellent rations and 



106 WAR PICTURES 

interesting company at the Hotel de la Chasse. 
It was quite touching to note the interest which 
people of all classes took in our sad mission, and 
the pains to which they went to help us in every 
way. ' Do you know the graves on such and such 
a by-road, on so-and-so's farm, in Mme. X.'s 
garden ? I will take you there to-morrow.' In 
this kind of way I believe we found and saved many 
a grave which might, in time, have been abandoned 
to its fate. We also visited the hospital, where 
we found in the register the names of two soldiers 
who had died of their wounds, but to whom letters 
were still being addressed from home. In order 
to be able to break the sad news it was, of course, 
necessary to open the letters and so learn the name 
of the senders ; no duty was ever so painful, and 
seldom have I read in poetry or prose anything 
more heart-rending than these supplications for 
tidings, blended with remorse for past failings and 
gentle upbraidings for persistent silence, written 
long after the beloved hands had been folded in 
sleep for ever. 

Of the bitterness of war to combatants I have 
already seen enough to make me marvel at their 
heroism in danger and their indifference to death. 
But the pathos of letters, such as those to which 



THE RAVAGE OF WAR 107 

I have referred and scores of others, is enough to 
make me think that probably the fierce and fearful 
sensations of men in action are as nothing compared 
to the agonies endured by the silent watchers at 
home, the mothers and wives and lovers who have 
sent their best in God's keeping to the Front. 

' He has given his life for his country,' said a 
poor woman at the hospital bedside of her dead 
husband. ' I cannot complain ; France was his 
mother, I was only his wife.' 



CHAPTER IX 

TOWARDS THE FRONT 

La Ferte-sous-Jouarre — Joint War Monuments — ^A Famous Abbey 
— In a French Hospital — ^Allied in Sorrow — The Commandant 
at Fere — ^An Amusing Incident — On * Joy -riding ' — ^Fismes 
and the Sentry — Under Fire — ^A Concert in a Clearing Hospital 
— ^Mass before Action 

La Ferte-sous-Jouarre is a charming little town 
on the Maine in which there was some desperate 
fighting to drive the Germans back towards 
the Aisne. The whole length of the river front, 
once occupied by picturesque houses, is now a 
mass of ruins — dumb witnesses to the accuracy 
of the fire from British guns that operated from 
the hills to the south ; the bridge also was blown 
up, so that the inhabitants will have every cause 
to remember the fight of last September for 
some time to come. The first time I visited La 
Ferte a German ' taube ' was hovering over it 
for some unknown reason. It can have observed 
very httle, except that the inhabitants were 
gradually recovering from bombardment and 
brigandage, for a more innocent open town it is 

108 



TOWARDS THE FRONT 109 

impossible to imagine ; it is not fortified, even to 
the extent of a hospital or a really historic 
church. 

I had met the Abbe some weeks previously 
at Meaux, and he very kindly came with us on 
our round of visits to the neighbouring villages. 
There had been a great deal of promiscuous burying 
m this area, and it was most valuable, as well as a 
great saving of time, to have as our companions 
two priests so well known as the Abbe at La 
Ferte and the Cure of Jouarre. With their help 
we were able to trace quite a large number of 
graves, but few of them, alas ! bore any names : 
the most, therefore, that one could do in these 
circumstances was to ask the local authorities 
to get substantial wooden crosses to mark the 
spots in place of the temporary ones that were 
falling to pieces. This they all consented to do; 
but they said that they would not rest content 
until they had brought our men with their own 
into the various churchyards, where they will 
lay them side by side and erect war monuments 
over them. To defray the expenses of such 
memorials there is in France a society known as 
the ' Souvenir Frangais,' with which I hope some 
similar organisation in England will get into 



no WAR PICTURES 

touch, and will offer to share the cost, as we shall 
share the honour, of a joint symbol of Death 
and Glory. Above La Ferte, on the south side 
of the river, and at the top of a long steep hill, 
is the town of Jouarre, famous for its fifteenth- 
century church, its very ancient crypt, and for 
its abbey, of which I must sadly confess that 
I had never heard before, except in connection 
with the name of Lord Randolph ChurchilFs 
mare Abbesse de Jouarre. In both the church 
and the crypt there are a number of most interest- 
ing things — gold and enamelled shrines, carved 
marble columns, exquisitely chiselled sarcophagi 
and recumbent figures in stone, one of which is 
said to represent Ste Ozanne, a Queen or Princess 
of Scotland, whose bones are buried there. I am 
told that this is not the real name of the Saint ; 
her history has for ages been hidden behind 
a veil of mystery, which is soon to be raised by 
the appearance of a work that will disclose her 
true name and all that can be known about her. 
The abbey is now a military hospital, in an ideal 
situation for anything else, with its gorgeous view 
of the wooded hills and vineyards across the 
valley ; but its inaccessibility to all facilities for 
transport, whether of wounded or supplies, makes 
it a constant care to those who are responsible 



TOWARDS THE FRONT 111 

lor its upkeep. One thing, however, struck us 
immensely — namely, the extraordinary ingenuity 
of the medical staff in turning the most unlikely 
materials to profitable use with the utmost economy ; 
they made their own doors and electric lamps 
and a great many beds of a new pattern out of 
odds and ends which, I am tempted to think, 
the R.A.M.C. or the Red Cross would have thrown 
on to the dust-bin as rubbish. Most of the doctors 
had been at the Front at one time or another during 
the War and they told us numbers of capital 
stories about their men in the trenches. One, 
for instance, told of the poor fellow who had 
to be informed that, owing to his wound, he 
could not go back to the Colours, as he would 
never be able to lift up his arms again ; to which 
the gallant fellow replied : ' What does that 
matter ? In our regiment nobody surrenders.' 
And, when we were discussing the sort of garments 
that kind relatives send out to the Front to keep 
the men warm in winter, another doctor said 
that he had come across a man with one of those 
armless waistcoats made out of newspaper. This 
fellow was sitting quite happily in a trench reading 
it. He observed quite simply : ' Quand je m' em- 
bete je relis mon gilet.' ^ 

1 ' When I am bored, I peruse my waistcoat.' 



112 WAR PICTURES 

This tour led us through beautiful country 
between Jouarre and Coulommiers, every inch 
of which was fought over last September, where 
we find our heroes lying in every churchyard 
and in many a park. Here, as elsewhere, our 
experience was one of unbroken courtesies and 
kindness and sympathy. I quote from the Report 
which I wrote on my return : 

In all this region, wherein perhaps more than 
in any other the French feel that the bravery and 
skill of the British troops saved them and their 
country, there is an intense desire to do all that 
is possible to shov/ not only their gratitude but 
an emotion very like love for Great Britain. . . . 
They gladly offer perpetual concessions of land 
in their cemeteries ; they wish to lay our soldiers 
beside their own ; they will take any amount of 
trouble to find and tend our graves in scattered 
and obscure localities, and they long for permission 
to gather them into consecrated gromid. 

Allied in sorrow and sympathy, as in confidence 
and courage, let us hope that no mistakes will 
be made upon either side, however trivial on the 
surface, that may endanger even for a moment 
the complete harmony of aim, thought, and action, 
upon which victory depends. 

Now turning north again from Coulommiers, 
almost the most southern point in the retire- 



TOWAEDS THE FRONT 113 

ment, we follow a section of our troops in their 
advance across the Marne towards the river 
Aisne. We stop at Chateau-Thierry (where there 
are, by the way, several manufactories of wind- 
instruments) and have luncheon by the river- 
side in a hotel over whose porch is an enormous 
hole made by a shell. Close by is an attractive 
statue of De la Fontaine, of fable fame, which 
escaped all harm in a town where the street-fighting 
was particularly fierce, and where nearly every 
house and tree in the principal streets is pitted 
and scarred by bullets. Above the town stands a 
fine old fortress, built by Charles Martel in the eighth 
century, and besieged and taken by the English in 
the fifteenth ; so we were not altogether strangers, 
but possibly more welcome, when, after the lapse 
of four hundred years, we English arrived the 
other day before the castle with arms in our hands. 
Thence let us go on to Fere en Tardenois. 
Many of our soldiers are buried here in the church- 
yard ; it was, I think, head quarters of the 
British force for some time. I shall never forget 
this little town, on account of the stormiest and 
the funniest interview which I had one Sunday 
morning with a newly arrived Commandant de 
la Place. I had been, as in duty bound, to call 



114 WAE PICTURES 

upon him at his official residence, but he was not 
at home ; so we proceeded to visit the mayor. 
Suddenly, from a side street, we heard a voice 
of thunder roaring (if I may use such a word 
respectfully of so great a man) at our car. Of 
course we stopped as soon as possible, but not 
soon enough ; whereupon we were surrounded by 
soldiers and, when a large enough crowd had 
collected, we were addressed as a pubUc meeting 
by this tiny little man who had such a big hat 
covered with gold braid that one could hardly 
see his face, though we knew where the voice 
came from. At first nothing would pacify him. 
We showed him passports and ' permis de circuler,' 
and all the other documents that we happened 
to have brought with us, but these only added 
fuel to the fire. He stormed at us for not having 
reported to him on our arrival in ' his ' town — 
the very thing we had done ; he cross-questioned 
us both as to why we had stopped and why we 
wished to proceed, but fortunately he did not 
give us time for cross answers. Eventually we 
were able to make him aware of our very innocent 
mission and he became somewhat quieter, but 
he was far from happy in his mind. If we had 
not been so hungry, I think we should have departed 



TOWARDS THE FRONT 115 

at once ; indeed we promised to do so if he, on 
his part, would show us where we could get some 
food to take with us. Thereupon his attitude 
immediately changed ; he and his staff marched 
solemnly with us to a little restaurant (which 
had been forcibly ' closed by order ' the night 
before), directed it to open its doors and to feed 
us. Such nice people, the inn-keeper and his 
wife, and such excellent food ! When the Com- 
mandant had left us, there arose a sound of subdued 
and respectful merriment ; it seems that, until 
quite recently, there had been a certain number 
of spies travelling through the town a great deal 
too easily, and that the disguise of British uniforms 
in Red Cross cars was not unknown. Our boister- 
ous friend had just been appointed to put things 
right in Fere ; so when, two days after his arrival, 
he captured us, I suppose he was anxious that 
everybody should know it ! However, after 
luncheon, he returned absolutely satisfied, doubt- 
less by telephone from our last halt, as to our 
hona fides, and gave us all the help he could. 
So all ended happily ; for when I saw the land- 
lady of the restaurant on a subsequent visit 
(the peppery Commandant had, alas ! been trans- 
ferred) she told me that the day we lunched 

I 2 



116 WAR PICTURES 

there the order to close her restaurant had been 
withdrawn. 

At Fere en Tardenois we are at the gate of 
the Aisne country : woods natural and planted, 
cultivated fields and undulating land, and the 
farther we travel north or east the more distinct 
becomes the sound of the guns. I shall always be 
sorry that my conscience never allowed me (though 
my ' permis de circuler ' did) to go right into Reims. 
I say my ' conscience,' but I am not sure that 
it was altogether that which prevented me. In 
my visits to other parts of the line, both French 
and English, I had heard such hard things said 
of those — especially those in high places who 
ought to have known better — who clamoured and 
intrigued to spend a week-end here or there on 
the Front, out of no motive nobler than curiosity, 
that I determined from the outset to go nowhere 
in France except on business bent. Frankly, I 
should not like to be the gentleman (who had as 
much to do with the fighting as any other neutral) 
whose influence procured him leave, in his leisure 
hours, to go along a certain road (where he left his 
car), and then to climb a hill whence he could get 
a good view of a certain battle. When he had 
feasted long enough on this sight he returned to 



TOWAKDS THE FRONT 117 

his car, to find it wrecked and his chauffeur killed 
by a shell that had burst in the road during his 
absence. War seems to me to be too cruel and 
damnable a thing for any one to want to watch it 
who can honourably be excused from it, too serious 
a thing to allow its directors to be constantly inter- 
rupted by visits from influential tourists. Some- 
how I cannot imagine the German staff distracted 
from their work by the untimely arrival of curious 
people ' who treat us as though we were the Zoo.' 
Holding these views I did not go into Reims, 
for the British Army had never moved so far to 
the east, and there was nothing for me to do in 
that direction farther than the little town of 
Fismes. We were there one bitterly cold night 
in January under a full moon in a frosty sky. As 
usual we had to apply to the local authorities for 
billets and each of us found himself lodged in first- 
rate quarters. I was entertained by an old farmer 
and his wife whose property was for the time being 
in the hands of the enemy ; they had sons and 
grandsons at the War and were full of pride and 
interest in all that was going on. It was not, 
however, any part of their duty to feed us ; so, 
in the evening, we found a humble hotel near the 
railway, where we got all that was necessary to 



118 WAR PICTUEES 

sustain life. After supper we were walking home 
through the silent market-place, thinking no evil, 
when a voice rang out from the steps of the Town 
Hall : ' Qui va Id ? ' and we found ourselves within 
five yards of a sentry whose rifle barrel seemed to 
be peering at our waist-belts. So unexpected was 
the challenge that every word of every known 
language failed me ; I could no more utter the 
monosyllable ' friend ' in English at that moment 
than I could have spoken it in Choctaw or in 
Chinese. My tongue clave to the roof of my 
mouth, whilst my brain was occupied in creating 
the pathetic picture of three Englishmen stretched 
in the snow, victims of the unerring aim of a 
territorial ally. It seemed minutes before I could 
find words ; but when, at last, the power of speech 
returned and I gasped out ' Amis — Anglais,'' both 
we and the sentry were immensely relieved, and 
the incident ended in laughter. And so to bed, 
where, for a long time, I lay awake listening to 
the church bells as they chimed the hours and to 
the cannon-shots as they burst upon the music of 
that midnight peace. 

The next day we moved quietly along the line 
of the Aisne in rear of the Army, searching for and 
finding graves as we went. We were now in the 



TOWARDS THE FRONT 119 

beating heart of the real thing : aeroplanes were 
soaring about in the cloudless sky, and the jar of 
guns was ceaselessly dinning about our ears. At 
one point our work took us down to within a few 
hundred yards of the trenches, to a farm where 
thirty British soldiers were buried ; there we had 
the novel sensation of hearing the famous ' seventy- 
five ' cannon shooting over our heads to the hill- 
tops that faced us across the river, whilst we could 
observe on either side of us the astonishing shower 
of compliments in kind which the enemy returned 
upon woodland and farm and field. I am not 
going to pretend for a moment that I liked it : 
on the contrary, I thought it all exceedingly 
unpleasant, and it would be idle affectation to 
suggest that I was anything but glad when we 
returned to the right side of a sheltering liill and 
watched the French artillery in action from an 
observation-point that was comparatively safe. 
But all day we were searching for graves in rather 
exposed places and not without success, for we 
were just in time to see many crosses that could 
not have stood much longer and to ask our French 
soldier-friends to put up new ones. In the evening 
we withdrew a few kilometres to the rear and 
were most hospitably entertained by the medical 



120 WAK PICTURES 

staff of a clearing hospital not far from Soissons, 
though still within range of the German guns, as 
our hosts had often found to their cost. But 
imagine the contrast to the turmoil outside and 
to the pain upstairs when I found myself listening, 
after dinner, to the music of a string quartet as 
perfect as you will ever hear in a concert room ! 
Four stretcher-bearers had come in with their 
instruments, and I was anticipating the ordinary 
kind of camp-concert that one associates with 
summer evenings after manoeuvres in peace-time : 
I was not in the least prepared for Brahms 
and Bach and advanced French compositions 
interpreted by men, now mobilised, who were all 
gold-medallists of the Conservatoire in Paris and 
whose names are household words with the concert- 
going public. That night we were billeted in a 
deserted house which the owners had left, just as 
it stood, when the civilian population was moved 
to the rear. It was quite a curious sensation to 
find oneself a visitor in a nice house without host 
or hostess ; to see their letters and household 
gods scattered about, their scent-bottles from the 
hair-dresser at Reims, their books from the library 
at Soissons — places which now can boast of no such 
peace-time conveniences. But neither the signi- 




FRENCH CLEARING HOSPITAL : SUMMER QUARTERS 




TOWARDS THE FRONT 121 

ficance of our lonely quarters, nor the warning 
that the sound of bursting shells would probably 
awaken us during the night, nor yet the noisy 
rumbling of ambulances returning from the Front, 
prevented us from sleeping sound and late after 
the adventures of the day. 

In May I visited the same staff again in their 
summer quarters, rather farther behind the line. 
They had been close up to the Front ever since 
August, and it was their turn to have something 
like a rest. I found them delightfully installed 
in three comfortable houses set in the depths of 
a large park, with terraces for the invalids to bask 
upon and ornamental water for the convalescents 
to fish in. And there again, on a beautiful summer 
evening, we were fortunate enough to listen to a 
wonderful concert in the open air by the same 
artists who had charmed us in the winter. It was 
a lovely scene : the musicians on a balcony, 
patients' beds drawn up to every window, fifty 
or sixty wounded men in hospital uniform lying 
about on the green lawn, now listening intently, 
now singing some patriotic chorus, but papng no 
attention whatever to the rattle of the mitrailleuses 
in the distance, whose sound was far more famihar 
to them than it was to me. 



122 WAE PICTUEES 

Another scene remains to be described before 
I close my notes on this visit to the Aisne. It 
was the Sunday chosen by His Hohness the Pope 
to be devoted to prayers for Peace in every 
church throughout Catholic Christendom; by 
accident or design, the same day had been selected 
to celebrate the victories of the ' seventy-five ' 
gun in every county in France. Three courses 
were thus open to us all : either ' to seek peace 
and ensue it,' or to buy little papier-mache medals 
bearing the effigy of this famous death-dealing 
cannon, which were on sale in the streets and 
outside the church-doors, or to buy the medals 
and then go to Mass. This last, I suspect, was 
the most popular line of conduct. Mass was at 
9.30, in a small but very beautiful church of 
Norman design, which was already nearly full 
when we arrived — full, in the sense that Catholic 
churches are full nowadays, from the chancel 
steps to the west-end door, transepts and aisles 
crammed. There were perhaps two thousand 
soldiers, from the highest to the lowest, in their 
war-stained uniforms, which seemed to spread a 
haze of bluish-grey across the nave, a soft cloud 
of warm colour only broken here and there by the 
white flecks of head-bandages and arm-slings — 



TOWARDS THE FRONT 123 

the honourable badges of those who have fallen by 
the way. What a congregation of practising 
Catholics ! These men — unkempt, weary, and 
accoutred — have some of them tramped down to 
Mass, after their long vigil beside the guns or in 
the trenches, to say their thanksgiving ; others, 
on their way up to the first line where they will be 
under fire by midday, offer perhaps their last 
Intercession with the Sacrifice before they march. 

The organ plays a soft prelude as the Celebrant 
enters the Sanctuary ; the Introit is chanted by 
a voluntary but not particularly tuneful choir. . . . 
I notice the priest tonsured but mustachioed ; 
he kneels before the altar and, beneath his lace 
alb, I catch sight of the scarlet breeches and 
high riding-boots of a cavalry soldier. The Mass 
proceeds ; intercessory prayers are read from the 
choir-steps by a venerable Cure, and the sermon 
is then preached by yet another soldier- priest 
without vestments of any kind, just wearing his 
dusty blue uniform with the simple badge of the 
Red Cross upon his arm. The Canon is reached, 
and through the atmosphere of devotion, tense 
and awful, is wafted soft, stringed music, as 
of angels, broken by the thunder of guns afar. 
' In terra Pax hominibus honce voluntatis, . . . 



124 WAR PICTURES 

Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini, . . . 
Pacem meam do vobis,^ from within, answered by 
the angry roar of artillery from without. And 
the same thing is going on all down the line from 
Nieuport to the Vosges, from the Italian- Swiss 
frontier to the Adriatic : in very concrete form 
the eternal fight is being delivered between Love 
and Hate, Good and Evil, Life and Death. . . . 
Mass is over ; the Priest has blessed his congrega- 
tion and his comrades. As admiring citizens of 
an allied nation we watch these ragged regiments 
of a royal people stream out into the sunlight to 
obey the call of Duty. Then we proceed upon 
our way to search for the hidden resting-places 
of our own most noble dead. 



CHAPTEE X 



JOAN OF ARC 



A Visit to Orleans — The Anniversary — ^No Processions * as usual * 
— French and British Tributes — Passing Reflections — In the 
Cathedral — ^A Wonderful Ceremony — Her Festival at the Front 
— Impressive Scenes 

To appreciate the change, deep and wide, which 
this terrible war has wrought in the temperament 
of the French people as a whole, I followed the 
advice of an old French friend and paid a visit to 
Orleans on May 8 — the day upon which, for 
nearly five centuries, that historic city has celebrated 
the name and fame of Joan of Arc. As a matter 
of fact, I arrived from Paris on the previous evening, 
in company with the Mayor of Orleans who has 
also been M.P. for the city for the past thirty 
years. From what he told me, and from what 
I have read in old chronicles, I learned how festive 
and brilliant these celebrations had been of yore. 
In old days every house was decorated with flags 
and flowers ; fireworks and military music, pro- 
cessions and popular manifestations of every 
kind, ushered in Joan of Arc's day. But, on 

125 



126 WAE PICTURES 

this beautiful summer eve of the festival, all these 
externals were absent ; gay trappings were nowhere 
to be seen whilst the flower of France was battling 
in the trenches. People appeared to be going 
about their ordinary business ; military cripples 
in large numbers were limping along the streets ; 
a few enterprising persons were selling Httle 
medallions of Jeanne d'Arc, whose many statues 
seemed to have rather more admirers than usual. 
And that was all. 

The next morning — ' the day ' — the change 
was all the more apparent. For long, long years, 
May 8, when Joan of Arc drove the English out 
of Orleans, was kept as a feast-day, which united 
every section of a city that still glories in her name. 
Grand processions of Church and State once 
paraded together through the narrow streets — 
the Bishop and the Mayor in close co-operation; 
there used to be a military representation (in 
ancient costumes) of the passage of Joan of Arc 
across the Loire to relieve the town. But in this 
year of grace neither of these parades was possible. 
The Law of Separation utterly prevented a joint 
procession of clerical and civil authority — more's 
the pity ! — and the poignant circumstances of 
the War made any theatrical show unthinkable. 



JOAN OF ARC 127 

Do not say to yourself, ' How unfortunate for 
you to have selected such an unlucky year ! ' 
Not at all ; it was worth anything to see, naked 
and unashamed, the Soul of a people in mourning, 
paying homage of the purest kind to her whom 
one may almost call their Patron Saint, without 
the meretricious aid of superfluous entertain- 
ment. Joan of Arc is the heart of this beautiful 
land : five hundred years ago she delivered it 
at the eleventh hour ; to-day, in the hour of 
trial and danger, the population turns to her 
again. The law of the State against the Church 
has had its way ; the net result here, as elsewhere 
in France, is an attitude towards the supernatural, 
not only of gratitude but of hope. That, surely, 
is the explanation of the overflowing congregations 
that I have seen month after month in the cathe- 
drals of Paris and Rouen and Beauvais and Abbeville 
and Amiens and Meaux, in churches which once 
were almost deserted ; that is why the Low Mass 
in the cathedral at Orleans this morning was said 
in the presence of several hundred people. Their 
Jeanne is with them still ; hers was the name 
that won the day in 1429; the name which was 
the Army password throughout the French lines 
on September 3, 1914, when the German advance 



128 WAR PICTURES 

upon Paris was checked for reasons which are as 
yet unexplained. 

Feeling as I do about Joan of Arc, I was 
delighted when the Mayor asked me to accompany 
him and the civil and mihbary dignitaries of the 
Department on their annual visit to the great 
statue of the 'Virgin Dehverer ' in the principal 
square, and then to the cemetery to pay homage 
to the fallen soldiers of France who lie there. 
Once more he explained that there would be no 
military bands, no orations, no 'pomp and cir- 
cumstance ' this year. All the more wiUingly, I 
accepted, and at 10 a.m. we left the Mairie, perhaps 
only fifty strong, preceded by those who were 
deputed to carry our memorial wreaths. At the 
principal statue, in the centre of the Place du 
Martroi, an immense crowd had assembled — drawn 
thither, not by mimes or music, but by the impulse 
of rare devotion. There we deposited our wreaths, 
and I was invited by the Mayor to say a few words 
to the multitude in French. It was a baffling 
request, but impossible to refuse ; so I spoke for 
a minute or two about ' the incomparable daughter 
of France who long ago pointed out the path of 
Patriotism down which the children of France 
are now marching through sufiering to Victory." 




STATUE OF JOAN OK AIU', I'LACE DU MAirrEOI, ORLEANS 




2'JT - ORfFlA^ Hue Jenri 4 \rc Ml Phot_ 

THE CATHEDRAL, ORLEANS 



JOAN OF ARC 129 

The Mayor replied in an admirable little speech, 
and then we all proceeded on foot for a mile or 
so to the cemetery, where we found another 
great concourse of people, all in black, awaiting 
us ; there too, a forest of small wooden crosses 
erected to the victims of the War — French, British, 
Moroccans, Indians, and others. Once more I 
had to speak, and the Mayor acknowledged my 
tribute of respect in appropriate language. After 
this we left the central monument, and the crowd 
surged round it ; everyone seemed to have brought 
a sprig of Hlac, a bunch of spring flowers or a palm- 
leaf, and these they laid in masses beside our own. 
It was a wonderfully touching ceremony, which I 
would not have missed for anything. 

The afternoon I spent in sight-seeing and 
reflection, in a city that is radiant with chestnut 
and hawthorn and lilac in full bloom. 

Two things strike me as particularly curious : 
in the Joan of Arc Museum there must be hundreds 
of portraits of ' La Pucelle,' whether in bronze 
or clay, oil or crayon, china or wax ; there is no 
resemblance whatever between any two of them, 
nor is there in the whole of that collection anything 
that pretends to be authentic of her features or 
her handwriting or her property. I am told there 



130 WAE PICTURES 

is nothing of the kind in France — or elsewhere. 

Secondly, I cannot find any contemporary record 

of enthusiasm or even gratitude (if one excepts a 

few prayers for her deUverance from prison) for 

Joan of Arc, whilst she was engaged in recovering 

the national liberty of France, save only among 

the devoted soldiers whom she led. Every 

difficulty was placed in the path of her campaign 

by the Court of the King whom she had come from 

the Vosges to succour ; she was betrayed by those 

of her own household to the enemy at Compiegne, 

not a French soul seems to have witnessed in her 

favour at the trial, and for years after her death 

it was an indiscretion, if not an offence, even to 

mention her name in official documents. For 

a contemporary appreciation of her character we 

must have recourse to the words of one of her 

executioners at Rouen : ' We have burnt a Saint." 

The French — they do not deny it — cared so httle 

about her during her life-time that, but for the 

awakening of a later and a better conscience, they 

would now know as little of her prowess for France 

as they know about the features of her face. How 

strange, how inexphcable it all seems ! Yet the 

greater glory to her memory. Though never 

limned in hfe, she has now a thousand * Hkenesses ' ; 



JOAN OF AEC 131 

though discredited by the chronicles of her day, 
she has now her literary champions in every 
language ; though deprived, by a law of the 
twentieth century, of the honour of dignifying a 
festival in which, till recently. Church and State 
participated, she is still the central figure of public 
veneration, difiering in intention, for the valour 
of her acts and the immortality of her spirit. 

I have said that, in so far as Joan the General 
is concerned, the popular festival was curtailed 
by the Civil Authority, in obedience to the very 
natural instincts of propriety in these days of 
family bereavement and national anxiety. But 
in respect of Joan the Mystic, the supernatural 
conqueress, the Beatified, the Church sees no reason 
to diminish in any degree the commemoration of 
the Virgin Deliverer of Orleans. So, on Sunday, 
May 9, I found Orleans Cathedral decked and 
draped in crimson and gold hangings, its altars 
ablaze, and every inch of its available space packed 
with a dense crowd from baptistery to apse. (I 
could not help thinking of the great ceremony of 
the Beatification of Joan of Arc which I had 
witnessed at St. Peter's in Eome in 1909, when 
Monseigneur Touchet, the present Bishop of 
Orleans, had presided over the Commission of 

K 2 



132 WAR PICTURES 

Examination which ultimately entitled Joan to 
enter the lists of the Beatified.) The High Mass 
began with a magnificent procession : a white- 
veiled sisterhood bearing the standard of ' La 
Pucelle,' choristers innumerable, abbes, clergy and 
cathedral staff, soldier-priests from the Front in 
uniform ; then the Bishop of Orleans in full 
canonicals, followed by the Bishop of Montauban 
similarly attired, and lastly the Archbishop of 
Tours, a saintly figure in cloth-of-gold, blessing the 
congregation as he passed. All the while a grand 
processional hymn was being sung by everybody 
in the cathedral, led by a choir of three hundred 
voices and accompanied by organ and full 
orchestra : it was called ' Hymne a I'Etendard de 
Jeanne d'Arc,' and was conducted by Abbe 
Laurent, the composer. At the end of the 
procession the sanctuary seemed to be one blaze 
of gold, and the Mass began. After the Gospel 
there was another procession down to the pulpit 
in the middle of the nave, where the Archbishop 
and the rest took their places to listen to the 
* panegyric ' as it is called. This was delivered 
in earnest and eloquent terms by the Bishop of 
Montauban (Mgr. Marty), the beauty of whose 
language and dramatic gesture made an hour seem 



JOAN OF AEG 133 

like ten minutes, and held the whole cathedral 
in one long tense embrace of silence. The Mass 
was then continued and concluded, about two 
and a half hours after the service had begun. 
Then I was taken by the Bishop to luncheon at 
his palace, where I had the honour of meeting 
the great divines who had come to the festival, 
and whose combined knowledge of the history 
and times of Joan of Arc, to say nothing of their 
brilliant conversation about her, could not have 
been surpassed in the whole of France. 

With a few friends, some of whom were leaving 
immediately for the Front, I passed the evening 
wandering in the woods of a delightful chateau on 
the Loire and returned to Orleans under a star-lit 
sky, to ponder over the phenomenal change that 
five hundred years have wrought in the relations 
between France and England and to smile, after 
all that I had seen that day, at the announcement 
in the evening papers : 'The Bishop of Metz has 
given orders to his clergy to remove from their 
churches all statues of the Blessed Joan of Arc' 

Her Feast Day at the Front 
I spent her festival proper, May 16, very far 
indeed from cathedrals and Archbishops and 



134 WAR PICTURES 

processions. Only a week after I had left Orleans, 
and all I have described above, I was once more 
out at the Front, where the French guns were firing 
with the regularity that connotes illimitable ammu- 
nition, and German shells were falling ' like leaves 
in Vallombrosa.' I went to Low Mass in a little 
village church, built in the thirteenth century : 
tumble-down, dirty, picturesque, but full of the 
right sort of people. I arrived a good half- hour 
too soon : there was time, therefore, to see a fine 
fight between a French aeroplane and some German 
guns : the former represented to the naked eye by 
a speck in the sky and the latter by vivid little 
flashes, immediately followed by white feathery 
cloud-balls in the heavens, betokening the bursting 
of one shell after the other. And so to Mass, 
down an avenue of horses in reserve, followed by 
the priest— a cavalry soldier, who had ridden over 
for the service. 

Later in the morning I paid a visit to a ruined 
Abbey, built on the heights of a rock that commands 
the enemy lines, and from which we could see one 
important German observation-post. I hasten to 
add that there were no French guns anywhere 
near this ancient and sacred building. As we 
approached the church, up a rugged pathway 



JOAN OF ARC 135 

hewn out of the soHd rock, we heard a very 
' cheerful noise ' surging out on to the summer air. 
It was High Mass for the soldiers, and they were 
singing a plain-song Gradual with all their might. 
"VVe looked in and found the remains of the ancient 
church simply but splendidly decorated with 
hangings and banners and flowers in honour of 
Joan of Arc, and the whole floor space crowded 
with soldiers. Across the field of powdered-blue 
uniforms, I saw in the distance the parish priest 
at the altar, attended by an old man of about 
eighty years of age, who ' served' in his work-a-day 
attire. It was altogether an inspiring sight and 
significant of the true spirit in which the French 
are fighting this war. 



CHAPTER XI 

INTER ARM A C A RITAS 

A * Neutral ' Atmosphere — Geneva — Censorship of the Press — The 
International Committee of the Red Cross — Its Works, Respon- 
sibilities, and Success — The Refugees' Help Society — On the 
French Frontier — Experiences of the Exiles — German Switzer- 
land — Berne — Charity for All 

What contrast could be greater, after ten months 
spent largely within hearing of the guns, than to 
wake up one fine morning in July in the serene 
atmosphere of a neutral country ? Yet it so 
occurred to me, for my work suddenly called me 
into Switzerland, and I left Paris with its anxieties 
and sorrows, its wounded and its young reserves, 
to find myself twelve hours later beside the placid 
waters of the Lake of Geneva. Here there is no 
sadness in the streets, no shops are closed — not 
even German ones ; there are no uniforms, except 
those of the hotel porters, no picture post-cards 
depicting scenes of war and misery. All is just 
as bright as it was twelve months ago : there are 
bands playing in the restaurants, parties making 
excursions in the steamers, little white-winged 

136 



INTER ARM A CARITAS 137 

cutters flitting to and fro upon the deep blue 
lake. I find myself wondering whether the same 
world can contain within so small a circle two 
atmospheres so greatly differing ; whether the same 
mind can possibly grasp almost simultaneously 
two such conflicting impressions of pleasure and 
pain. The whole world was at war, so it seemed 
to me only last nighfc ; to-day, I realise that in 
the very centre of it there is actually — Peace. . . . 
The sun is setting ; boys are bathing in the lake, 
men set free from business are solemnly fishing 
in rows from the bridges, a noisy aeroplane is 
flying for advertisement over the roofs of the 
houses — I have not seen such innocent aeronautics 
for months. ... It is night, and I have dined at 
a restaurant in this neutral city, hearing French 
Itahan, and German spoken at the tables near 
me ; there are no Hghts hidden here ; the bay is 
outlined with a gleaming necklace of lamps, the 
Kursaal is brilliantly illuminated with electricity, 
and the lightning flashes over Mont Blanc in the 
distance are less terrifying by far than the flame 
of the shells that broke over Hill 60. 

So far so neutral. The foregoing may stand 
for a passable portrait of the face of this neutral 
comitry, but it is no proper description of either 



138 WAR PICTURES 

its head or its heart. We must all try to believe 
that these are neutral too, but it is very difficult. 
The head understands very clearly that the in- 
dependence of Switzerland is bound up with its 
neutrality, and the Federal Government, there- 
fore, is correctitude itself. Nevertheless, so far 
as I can gather, this august body is getting into 
trouble just now over the Censorship of the Press 
— like other august bodies ; and men are beginning 
to say, ' Neutrahty is all very well, but what about 
Liberty ? Surely we can be neutrals without 
being cowards.' And they appeal to the ever- 
blessed memory of William Tell for liberty to 
follow and express the dictates of their consciences 
rather than to bow the knee to a new Press- 
Gessler for liberty ' to exhibit our sympathy 
for heroic little Belgium and to do our duty in 
condemning her executioner." This, I feel pretty 
certain, is the unanimous view of Latin Switzer- 
land ; but the Government, whose seat is at 
Berne, has to consider Teutonic Switzerland as 
well, and its path is not an easy one. 

As for the heart of the country, it is indeed 
neutral, if by that we mean charitable and immensely 
kind to all belligerents alike. It is well symboHsed 
by the National Flag — a cross of pure white 



INTER ARMA CARITAS 139 

in the centre of a blood-red field. To Switzerland 
the non-official world has learned to look for 
news of prisoners of war and for getting money 
and comforts to them ; for forwarding letters 
from families to their sons wounded, as well as 
to civilians interned, in enemy countries ; for 
efiecting the exchange of prisoners, the visitation 
of prisoner-camps, and for numerous other offices 
of Christian benevolence in time of war. ' Inter 
arma caritas ' is the motto of the International 
Committee of the Ked Cross Society which sits 
at Geneva ; international, in the sense that it 
operates as a clearing-house between nations, 
not that it is composed of representatives of all 
nations, since each of its members must be a 
Swiss resident in Geneva. It is the strangest and 
one of the most successful of bodies. Apparently 
it has no constitution and it elects itself; yet 
it is accepted by Eed Cross Societies throughout 
the world as the Governing Body of the whole 
organisation, no part of which alters its con- 
stitution or radically changes its functions before 
consultation with, and the consent of, the Inter- 
national Committee. At this moment the duties 
of this important body extend far beyond the 
ordinary boundaries of a central committee. 



140 WAE PICTURES 

It has gathered round it, at the Musee Rath, 
an organisation of twelve hundred workers, nearly 
all voluntary, who labour day and night in the 
various sections that go to make up the ' Agence 
des Prisonniers de Guerre/ They forward letters 
and parcels ; answer enquiries from, and make 
investigations for, natives of all countries who 
are at war : their labour, like their love, for all 
men appears to be never-ending. I was greatly 
impressed with the business-like methods of this 
organisation, over which I was conducted by M. 
Edouard Naville, the celebrated Egyptologist, 
who is Vice-President of the International Com- 
mittee. The card-index system is the basis of 
operations : every single man, whose name reaches 
the Agency as a prisoner of war (whether military 
or civil), or as missing, or as killed, has a card to 
himself, upon which is written all that is known 
about him and the gist of communications to 
and from his family. To give some idea of the 
extent of the work transacted, the following 
figures may suffice. Between October 15, 1914, 
and January 31, 1915, the Agency received 26,473 
visitors, 17,000 telegrams, 990,000 letters— many 
of them making enquiries concerning 50 to 100 
names. During the same period they forwarded 



INTER ARMA CARITAS 141 

438,000 letters and 1,554,500 printed communica- 
tions ; wrote out 1,040,000 name-cards, corre- 
sponded with 104,500 families, and transmitted 
£40,000 to the inmates of camps in belligerent 
countries .1 ' Inter arma caritas ' is an appropriate 
motto for so wonderful an agency as this. 

But the beneficent work that is conceived 
and executed by neutral heads, hearts, and hands 
in Switzerland does not end with the work of 
the International Committee of the Eed Cross 
Society. Here, for instance, in the Eue de Berne, 
is another wonderfully human institution, the 
Bureau des Eapatries Civils, which since the 
beginning of the War has attended to the wants of 
exchanged civilian prisoners and of refugees as they 
pass through Switzerland to their native land. 
Of exchanged civilians they have nearly 20,000 
names of all nationalities that have passed through 
their hands, and no less than 65,000 poor refugees 
from French territory occupied by the enemy 
are also on their lists. This institution has 
aroused, as indeed it should, the utmost sympathy 

^ The last statistics show that between October 15, 1914, 
and June 30, 1915, this agency corresponded with 234,731 
families ; received 1,800,000 letters, and 50,000 visitors ; for- 
warded about 71,300 letters and 11,500 telegrams to various 
destinations. 



142 WAR PICTURES 

and support from all classes, not only in Geneva 
but all over Switzerland. Its head quarters are 
in a huge gymnasium as large as a good-sized 
church. . . . 

The refugees have just arrived by train from 
some central place in Germany at which they 
have been collected — some from St. Quentin and 
Cambrai and Lille and some from the neighbour- 
hood of Verdun and the Vosges. They are the 
poorest of the poor and of all ages ; the very 
old and infirm are taken in ambulances from 
the train, the healthy walk, and the babies, of 
whom there are very many, I saw carried by 
Swiss soldiers in uniform. It is impossible to 
describe the state of filth, destitution, and utter 
misery in which nine-tenths of these human 
castaways reach the hall. Assembled there in 
the early morning, they are seated on benches 
and are given a meal served by scores of willing 
hands ; then, one by one, they are taken to a 
table and registered. After this they have to 
scan a huge board upon which are written the 
names of hundreds of missing people about whom 
information is sought. Often the pilgrim catches 
sight of his own name, which is then scratched 
off and news of him is sent at once to the enquirer. 




FKEXCll KIj:FL <;EES LEAMNt: CKN'EVA .STATION 




OUTSIDE THE BUREAU DES REPATRIES CIVIL.S, GK^E\A 



INTER ARM A CARTTAS 143 

His next visit is to a sort of lost-letter ofl&ce, 
where sometimes you see a sad face break into 
a smile when eyes catch sight of a letter addressed 
in a hand-writing which they never expected 
to see again ; but some eyes are still dim. After 
these preliminaries there is an inspection of 
clothing, and few are the cases in which it does 
not have to be renewed. The organisation is 
prepared for this and has fitted out close on a 
thousand bodies a day for over two months. Down- 
stairs, the building is splendidly arranged with 
bath-rooms and changing-rooms — for Swiss athletes 
in times of peace. In one room are three 
large tanks, about thirty feet long by six feet 
broad, filled with warm water and capable of 
holding ten men at a time. They strip themselves 
naked, the first time for months they say, and 
after a glorious bath they return to a dressing-room 
where they find a completely new suit of clothes 
to take the place of their old rags, which are put 
straight into a furnace and burnt. The women 
and children are similarly looked after, and the 
babies are taken ofi into a special bath-room 
where a number of little tubs are ranged in a 
row ; there the infants are scrubbed down and 
dressed up until — this is literally true in many 



144 WAR PICTURES 

cases — their own mothers do not know them. 
Thus the convoy is disposed of in three or four 
hours with the utmost quiet and precision, after 
which they are sent of! in tramcars to the French 
frontier at Annemasse and are once more on 
the dear soil of their native land. There they 
are received by a French official organisation, 
which has a list of the various destinations to 
which the refugees (if they have no relations ready 
to receive them) are to be sent ; many of them 
depart almost at once in trains that wait in readi- 
ness, and other are billeted in the village until 
they can be disposed of. 

The whole of this complicated machinery 
works like clock-work under an exceedingly able 
organiser. I was taken to see the various rooms 
set aside for an outfitting department ; they would 
have done credit to any large shop in London, so 
well-stocked and tidily arranged were they. I 
was shown the boot-room, to which about fifty 
boys and girls from the Geneva primary schools 
go twice a week to clean the boots that are kept 
in store, giving up part of their hoHday time to 
perform this useful and kindly little task. They 
tell me that the Geneva children take the utmost 
interest in the refugees ; they sew and knit for 



INTER ARMA CARITAS 145 

them, and often go without their midday meals, 
which they bring to the Bureau and ofier to some 
poor Httle waif who may need food more than 
they. 

One afternoon I went out to Annemasse and 
talked with some of the refugees who were lodged 
in the ' Maison Familiale/ The Directress of 
this estabhshment was a charming young lady 
who had escaped, after many adventures, from 
her invaded home. She had undergone severe 
bombardment and, after her village was taken, 
she and others were employed by the gentle Huns 
to collect and bury the dead ; her escape three 
months later was a thrilling story of peril overcome 
by courage. One poor old woman was there from 

S . She had been mercilessly treated, robbed 

and imprisoned with her husband, who was eighty 
years old and who died in hospital soon after 
reaching Geneva. Nothing could console her for 
the loss of her little home ; it was all she had or 
cared for. Her sons were kept in France by the 
Germans and made to work for them, her grand- 
sons were in the French Army, and she knew not 
whether they were alive or dead ; tears poured down 
her dear weather-beaten old face as she told the 
story of her exodus. Then I talked to a boy from 



146 WAE PICTURES 

M ; lie had been in a German hospital with 

heart-disease and was now utterly homeless and 
destitute. The things he had seen in those early 
days of the War were enough to make one's blood 
run cold as he told them. He spoke of a boy 
friend whom the German soldiers were ' chaffing ' 
in their heavy -tongued way : 

' You are French, are you not ? ' they asked 
him, and he answered ' Yes.' 

* Then why don't you show your colours ? 
Are you afraid ? ' 

The boy, nettled at this charge of cowardice 
and lack of patriotism, opened his coat and showed 
a little tricolour rosette pinned on his waistcoat 
over his heart. 

' That's right,' they scoffed. ' Now say " Vive 
la France ! " ' 

' Vive la France ! ' he shouted ; and they shot 
him dead. 

A woman looking out of a window saw this 
murder and cried out, ' Faineants, assassins ! ' ; 
she was shot dead at her window. 

There were others who could tell of the murder 
of English wounded at La Bassee under circum- 
stances of incredible cruelty ; God grant that 
these murderers may soon be brought to justice. 





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occupied territory to persons residing in that part of France not occupied by the Germans ^ ' 
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FACSIMILE (reduced) OF REGULATIONS ISSUED 
BY THE COMMANDANT TO REFUGEES FROM 
LA BASSEE 

Xotice the last paragi'aph. 



INTER AEMA CARITAS 147 

It is no doubt the recitation of such incidents, 
and hundreds Hke them, by men and women who 
have sufiered, and who feel their consciences and 
hearts reheved when they can unbosom themselves, 
out of earshot and gunshot of their gaolers, that 
has caused so great a change in the attitude of 
German Switzerland towards the true authors of 
this war. It was fear lest such narratives should 
reach too many neutral homes that prompted the 
German Government to suggest that French refugees 
from Germany should travel in non-stop trains 
through Switzerland into France— a suggestion 
that savoured too much of dictation for it to be 

adopted. 

As at Geneva, so in Berne, the seat of the 
Federal Government and the head quarters of 
the Army, which I observe is clad in uniforms 
of the latest German pattern. There, although 
the Swiss are partially mobilised on their frontiers, 
and have therefore the first claim on their com- 
patriots, I saw endless evidence of a national 
neutrality that is benevolent to all belhgerents. 
There is a committee of Berne ladies supplying 
prisoners in French, German, and British camps 
with comforts of various kinds ; there is a French 
section which sends bread (baked in enormous 

l2 



148 WAR PICTURES 

quantities in Switzerland) and clothing to French 
prisoners in Germany and which has appointed 
neutral delegates to superintend the distribution 
of all these gifts when they reach the various 
camps ; a Russian section, well supplied with 
money to buy comforts and necessities of life 
wholesale for the thousands of captive Russians 
whose famiHes are too far ofi to send them separate 
parcels; and a British section, which dispatches 
vast consignments of loaves and other articles 
to our own prisoners. All these, and the Red 
Cross Society in Switzerland, are working with 
a will and a perseverance beyond praise, glad 
no doubt that they are free from the burden and 
sorrow of war, yet anxious to pay for their im- 
munity by doing all that in them lies to help 
and reheve beUigerents abroad and their famihes 
at home in every way that the ingenuity of kind 
hearts can suggest. ' Inter arma caritas,' the 
Red Cross motto, is certainly the guiding principle 
of Swiss life to-day : generous and indiscriminately 
kind to the helpless and fallen victims of the 
German War. 



CHAPTER XII 

A RAILWAY JOURNEY 

The * Grands Blesses ' — Return from Exile — Happy Warriors — 
Inventive Newspapers — ^Demonstrations of Welcome — Home 
at Last 

Behold a train so important that hundreds of 
human beings at either end of its journey hunger 
for its appearance ; carrying freight so precious 
that the authorities took months to decide whether 
it should or should not proceed : a train so full 
of pathos and hope that the thousands who 
watched it pass knew not whether bo cheer or 
to cry. I suppose we have all, at some time or 
another, gone down to the London docks, or to 
one of our great provincial ports, to welcome the 
traveller home, and have fretted until the ship 
was signalled ; or ourselves, when many days' 
journey from England, have cursed the delays 
and counted the hours that separated us from 
the greeting which we knew was waiting for us on 
the platform or on the quay. But how weak and 
almost unworthy seem these emotions compared 

149 



150 WAE PICTURES 

to that which burns in the soul of the man who 
has been caged in a prison camp or hospital 
in Germany for nearly a year and who suddenly 
learns that, crippled for life though he be, he 
has been chosen as one among thousands to be 
exchanged and to be sent home ! 

Since the beginning of April several thousands 
of these broken soldiers of war have been cooped 
up at Constance, on the confines of Germany, 
gazing with longing eyes at free and peaceful 
Switzerland, beyond which lies ' La Patrie ' ; 
they await the close of long-drawn negotiations 
upon which all self-respecting foreign offices pride 
themselves, the findings of numerous medical 
and mihtary boards which will setble whether 
they are ill or incapable enough to be exchanged, 
the final sentence to go home or return back to 
hospital on enemy soil, with a heart-eating anxiety 
that baffles all description. 

At last the schedules, defining what constitutes 
an ' incurable,' are satisfactorily composed ; a selec- 
tion of 280 invalids is made from 3000 possibles, 
and they forthwith march, hobble, or crawl to the 
railway station, the happiest warriors on earth. 
The train is just comfortably filled ; besides the 
mutiles there are a few medical officers who, if 



A RAILWAY JOURNEY 151 

conventions had any sanctity in German eyes 
nowadays, ought never to have been interned, 
and a dozen Red Cross nurses and orderlies of 
Swiss nationality to take care of the helpless 
on the journey. A curious but not unsympathetic 
crowd watches the departure of the train ; being 
still in Germany there is no demonstration. But, 
at the Swiss frontier, a soldier presents arms, 
and quite a respectable gathering of people cry 
' Vive la France ! ' and throw flowers to the 
wounded — this in ' German ' Switzerland ! 

The journey continues to Zurich which is 
reached just before 10 p.m. There an immense 
crowd has assembled at the station to cheer the 
travellers with kindly words and presents ; but 
the shadow of the blessed word ' neutrality,' 
rather than its substance, has darkened the counsels 
of the local authority who forbid the public to 
approach the platform. Fortunately, through the 
kindness of the Swiss military authorities, I 
am provided with a ticket to travel by this train 
back to Geneva, and so, in company with the 
French Ambassador, M. Beau, and two ladies, 
the gates are opened to us and we join the convoy. 
The train consists of sixteen corridor- carriages, 
including one or two dining- saloons which have 



152 WAR PICTURES 

been suitably arranged for lying-down cases, 
carrying back to France the bravest and merriest 
collection of incurables that it has ever been 
my lot to see. We four visitors scatter through 
the train, each of us laden with trifling comforts 
for our comrades. I felt very proud of being 
the first Englishman who had hitherto been 
allowed to make this journey, of the opportunity 
to learn at first-hand something of the life that our 
wounded Allies had been living in Germany and 
to realise, even more fully than at the seat of war 
itself, the indomitable qualities of endurance and 
pluck which lie deep at the roots of a tempera- 
ment that we have always called mercurial. 

I plunged straight into a car-load of French 
soldiers with radiant faces, though they had only 
half the proper complement of legs and arms 
between them. Introducing myself as an ally 
in civilian clothes (for we were not allowed to 
wear khaki in Switzerland) they literally fell 
upon me with questions of every sort and kind. 

' Tell us what is really happening in the War.' 

' In the Argonne, where I was wounded ? ' 
says one. 

' Near Ypres : we still hold Ypres, I hope ? ' 
says another. 



A EAILWAY JOURNEY 153 

' What about the siege of Khartoum ? ' asks 
a third. 

' Tell us about the massacre in the Dardanelles,' 
demands a fourth. 

Gradually we got settled down to a regular 
kind of catechism, and I told them what wonderful 
things their countrymen were doing in Flanders 
and the Argonne and the Vosges, thanks to their 
splendid courage and the miracles wrought by 
the ' seventy-five ' gun. 

' Miracle, you call it ? ' said one man with a 
laugh. ' This isn't much of a miracle ! ' and he 
pointed to the empty flap of a trouser leg, a foot 
in a splint, and a shattered wrist. 

' That is what our " seventy-five " gave me 
when I was lying out in the open and the Boches 
made a counter-attack.' 

I was able also to dispel the illusions about 
the siege of Khartoum and a massacre of all 
French and British troops by the Turks which 
resulted in a complete retirement from the Dar- 
danelles ! These, and a large variety of similar 
stories, were the main contents of a bi-weekly 
newspaper published by the Germans at Charle- 
ville for the * benefit ' of French prisoners. 
They told me that they always bought it, though 



154 WAR PICTUEES 

money was scarce and it cost a penny, because 
there was always so much to laugh at in it ; cer- 
tainly, if all the issues of La Gazette des Ardennes 
were as unconsciously comic as those which I saw 
on that train, the penny was money well spent. 
Several men told me that, on the days when this 
egregious newspaper appeared with its imaginary 
news of French defeats and of disasters to the 
Allies all over the globe, German officers and 
N.C.O/s used to go round the camps and ask 
the men what they thought of it. The Germans, 
who unfortunately believed it all, were horrified 
to see their captives making exceedingly merry 
and declining to credit a single word. Another 
paper of the same agreeable kind is circulated 
for the benefit of EngHsh prisoners and is called 
The Continental Times — a Journal for Americans 
in Europe, price twopence halfpenny — and dear 
at the price. I can hardly imagine any sane 
American buying it, as it contains little but reprints 
of ravings against England (if possible by English 
writers), off-scouring from newspapers like the 
Gaelic- American and clumsy inventions by way of 
war news. It is fair to add that it now pubHshes 
some of the French and English communiques 
from the seat of war ; but it did not include these 



A EAILWAY JOUENEY 155 

items until it had done its best in all previous 
numbers to prove that such information from the 
AUies was unworthy of credence. 

In another compartment were a number of 
men who had fought beside our British troops and 
even now, after ten months' absence from the field, 
were full of praise for their shooting and calm 
courage in those * tight places ' that preceded 
the turning victory on the Marne. Some, too, 
had been in hospital at Maubeuge and elsewhere 
with ' Tommee' as they affectionately called all 
their English friends, and told story after story of 
how, with mouth-organs or card-tricks or incom- 
prehensible songs, the British soldier kept them 
all ahve when they were down on their luck. It 
was good hearing that, in hospital, they were 
all pretty well treated and fed, though medical 
attendance was short. It was not until they got 
drafted into camps that the food and barrack 
accommodation became unbearably bad and the 
gloom of imprisonment wore them down and 
broke their spirit. But even so, every one of these 
Frenchmen told me that still worse treatment 
and fouler food was the lot of the English and 
Russian prisoners, for whom the cultured Hun 
reserves the bitterest of his hate. This was very 



156 WAR PICTURES 

marked in some of the camps, where those French- 
men who could ever hope to fight again used to 
be called out on parade and exhorted to say- 
that they would now join the German forces 



Derfoufsftelle staM 75 gr Brot 

9lX. httq 50 gr IHc^I 

(Sultig fur bit 3«« com 3. Vdax bis cinji^Iiefelic^ 30. IKai. 

Derlcmfsfielle siabt 75 gr Brot 

yiX. f>tto 50 gr me(?I 

(Bultlg fut bk 3eit com 3. lUai bis einjc^Iiefelic^ 30. IKai. 

Detfaufsftelle SkM 75 gr Brot 

Qei^cl* o5et 

9flt. ^tg 50 gr rriel?! 

(Bultig fut bic 3eit com 3. IHai bis einlc^lieJUd? 30. lUat. 



'VV\/<v/\.s/\/./ 



FACSIMILE OF THREE BREAD TICKETS ISSUED TO HOUSEHOLDERS AT 
HEIDELBERG. 

and fight against the ' treacherous Enghsh and 
the barbarian Russians/ just as the captive 
Senegalese were oSered every kind of bribe if 
they would take service in Turkey and make 
an example of the Indian troops ! Needless to 



A RAILWAY JOURNEY 157 

say that all these flattering proposals fell on 
deaf ears. 

I passed through several carriages occupied by 
the graver cases, whose drawn faces told, without 
questions asked, the story of their long suffering 
in captivity. In adjoining beds lay two men, 
both wounded in the same trench in Belgium. 
They had both seen the same terrible scene : a 
long line of their own wounded and a German 
sauntering down that line and administering 
the couf de grace from a revolver to each helpless 
man as he passed. One of these invalids had three 
bullets in the lungs from this executioner, but 
did not succumb ; one bullet still remained to be 
extracted. The other poor fellow said that he 
had only escaped the fate of his unhappy comrades 
by smearing the blood, that flowed from a wound 
in one arm, over his face and feigning to be dead. 
This savage practice of ' finishing-off ' wounded 
men did not lack plenty of confirmation as one 
talked with those unfortunate men ; I hope that, 
now they are safe home again, their depositions will 
have been taken before a competent authority 
against the great day of reckoning. 

The main excitements on this memorable 
journey were the crowds at the few stations where 



158 WAE PICTURES 

the train was scheduled to stop. I have said 
that at Zurich no one was allowed on the platform ; 
the same rule applied in the beginning at Berne and 
Geneva. But, when we reached Olten, there were 
quite two thousand people thronging the station, 
bearing flowers and every imaginable gift. Cheers 
rang through the night air : ' Vive la France ! ' 
from the platform, ' Vive la Suisse ! ' from the 
train ; every invalid who could do so was hanging 
out of the window, shaking hands with ten new 
friends a minute and accepting cigarettes and 
chocolate and postcards which were pressed upon 
him from all quarters. At Fribourg the crowd 
was at least 10,000 strong, and its enthusiasm 
knew no bounds ; here bouquets were flung by 
dozens into all the carriages, flags were presented 
and banners waved, national airs were sung 
by a town choir and taken up by the assembled 
multitude, whose manifestations of joy did credit 
to them at 2 A.M. An hour later we reached 
Lausanne, thinking not unnaturally that demon- 
strations were over for the night, but this was far 
from being the case. Long before we steamed 
into the station a roar of welcome reached our 
ears, all the houses along the railway were bril- 
liantly lighted and people in ' slumber-wear ' of 



A EAILWAY JOUENEY 159 

every kind waved frantically from every window. 
I am pretty well accustomed by this time to seeing 
outbursts of enthusiasm and public demonstrations 
involving large crowds in many countries, but I 
candidly admit that the sight on Lausanne station 
at 3 A.M. was the finest of its kind that I have 
ever seen, and it absolutely took my breath away. 
I calculated that there must have been twenty 
thousand people there, standing in orderly rows, 
perhaps ten deep, from the back of the platform 
to the front, where they pressed against the carriage 
windows. Every available inch of space, benches 
and railings and lamp-posts, barrows and trucks 
and engines — all were requisitioned to get a view 
of the glorieux blesses. A sea of smiling faces, 
a garden of fresh-picked flowers, a forest of 
upstretched hands, a volume of full-throated 
cheering : were soldiers ever made so welcome, even 
in their own Motherland ? This wonderful reception 
stirred these splendid exiles to the depths of their 
souls ; there were glad tears in all their eyes, and 
it overcame some of the older men completely. 
But they soon pulled themselves together, and I 
heard a number of graceful little speeches of thanks 
being made from the various carriage windows ; 
I saw overcoats hauled down from the racks and 



160 WAE PICTUEES 

clasp-knives busily hacking of! regimental buttons, 
which were distributed to the throng outside ; 
there was only one discontented face — that of 
the conductor of the convoy, and the Frenchmen 
assured me that he was a German ! At last the 
train steamed out and we returned to our carriage, 
dazed with the sound and the brilliancy of the 
scene. 

The compartment in which I had been 
given a seat belonged to the principal French 
medical officer and to two of his colleagues, but 
there was no sitting room in it now. It was piled 
high with bouquets and banners and boxes and 
sacks full of presents, literally from the floor to 
the netting ' for light luggage only.' 

' I think we should arrange all these presents,' 
said the P.M.O., ' and offer them to the Colonel, 
our senior officer, if he is awake.' No sooner said 
than done ; it was discovered that Colonel 
d'Har court, a gallant old soldier of seventy, was 
not asleep, so a procession was formed, and all the 
principal gifts were taken to him for distribution 
among the men when they came to their journey's 
end. I wish I could have seen that touching 
arrival at Bellegarde station when, after ten months 
of martyrdom, these heroes were welcomed home 





GERMAN PRISONERS (mEDICAL) PASSING THROUGH GENEVA 



A EAILWAY JOURNEY 161 

by the Secretary for War. But I had to leave them 
at Geneva, as the dawn came up over the lake ; 
they had bidden farewell to a long night of misery, 
and one could read in every face the eagerness 
which waited for the 'joy that cometh in the 
morning.' 



CHAPTEE XIII 



IN ITALY 



Milan — Ready — A Socialist Meeting — Off to the Front — ^War 
Fever — Red Cross Work — Refugees — The Battle -spirit 

My modest album of war pictures would indeed 
be incomplete if I did not attempt a sketch of a 
visit which I paid recently to the Eed Cross Society 
in Milan. Once more I was transported, within 
the space of eight short hours, from the hospitahty 
of a neutral nation to the protection of a gallant 
ally through whose blood the war-fever is coursing 
fast. Rumour, the lying jade, had whispered 
to me that, whatever the newspapers might write 
to the contrary, I should find in Italy a nation 
half-hearted for the War and less than half -prepared. 
On this occasion she lied less cleverly than usual ; 
for the shortest of visits to that country is sufficient 
to persuade one that, whilst the people are whole- 
hearted for the cause which they are defending, the 
military and civil authorities need not fear compari- 
son with any of their Allies regarding the efficiency 
of their preparations at the outbreak of hostilities. 

162 



IN ITALY 163 

I had two opportunities of judging the martial 
spirit of the nation by the attitude of the people 
of Milan. On the morning after my arrival it 
was announced in the newspapers that, on the 
same evening, M. Vanderwelde — the Belgian 
Sociahst Minister — would address a mass-meeting 
in one of the principal theatres of the city and 
would plead the cause of his native land. The 
political colour of Milan at present is Socialist, 
the Mayor and the majority of the Municipal 
Council are Socialists. It seemed to me that such 
a meeting would be a fair test, though a high one, 
of the spirit of the country ; for if the Sociahsts 
(who have, rightly or wrongly, the reputation 
of being the peace-party in all countries) supported 
a war-meeting with enthusiasm, I might reasonably 
conclude that with other classes the War was 
probably popular. And so it was ; the hall was 
packed with a most demonstrative pubKc, whose 
patience did not become exhausted even though 
the proceedings began more than half an hour 
late. There were the usual manifestations to 
while away the time of waiting : cries of ' Viva la 
Guerra ! ' and ' Yive la Belgique ! ' followed by 
tumultuous cheering, until at last the ' platform ' 
began to assemble and the Mayor opened the 

M 2 



164 WAR PICTURES 

proceedings. He was vociferously received, and his 
observations were shorb and to the point. Next 
followed the well-known Belgian M.P., M. Lorand, 
who spoke in beautiful Itahan and appealed 
wonderfully to the intellect of a very appreciative 
audience. Then an impassioned speech in French 
from his colleague, M. d'Estree, who moved the 
people almost to tears, and finally M. Vanderwelde 
himself. Of course he had a splendid reception, 
but, from the very outset, he appeared to misappre- 
hend completely the character of the gathering. As 
it seemed to me, he imagined that he was addressing 
a meeting composed entirely of Socialists, instead 
of Allies, and he treated his subject almost entirely 
from the SociaUst point of view. He judged it 
necessary to make elaborate excuses for Socialists 
supporting the War at all, and to develop a long 
argument in justification of his present attitude 
as President of the International Committee of 
Sociahsts— a kind of 'apologia pro vita sua.' 
But this was not what a large number of his 
hearers, who were interested in the cause of Belgium, 
had come to listen to ; they were breast-high for the 
War, and had long ago put class and party spirit 
far behind them. It is not too much to say that 
a good deal of this orator's eloquence ofiended 



IN ITALY 165 

them and that, by their demonstrations of dis- 
approval, they let him know it. And yet, although 
they manifested their dissent and left the hall, 
he seemed unable to alter the quite inappropriate 
tone of his speech, and one felt at the end that he 
had missed a great opportunity— if, indeed, he had 
not done positive harm. 

The following morning I found myself in the 
middle of a far greater crowd assembled, as on the 
previous evening, to support the War, the whole 
War, and nothing but the War ; on this occasion 
they were not disappointed. It was the day of the 
departure for the Front of a regiment of volunteer 
cychsts, drawn from Lombardy in general and from 
Milan in particular. They had camped over- 
night, 500 strong, in the plains some thirty kilo- 
metres from Milan and were scheduled to arrive 
at 9.30 A.M. to make their triumphal progress 
through the city. But although there was plenty 
of triumph, there was very little progress : in 
fact the density of the crowds and the frenzied 
enthusiasm of the streets, which were black with 
people, made any sort of parade-advance impossible 
on the part of the regimen tthat was vainly struggHng 
to get to the Front. Each soldier became the centre 
of a crowd of wild admirers, who stuck flags in his 



166 WAE PICTURES 

coat, bouquets in the barrel of bis rifle, ribbons 
in his cap, garlanded his bicycle with flowers, 
and embraced him within an inch of his life. 
Vainly did the bugles attempt to sound the call to 
re-form ; they were utterly drowned by the cheering 
of many multitudes, carried away by the ecstasy 
of war fever and surging like a human ocean down 
and across all the thoroughfares of the city. There 
was no attempt to ' keep the course ' for the 
regiment ; I doubt whether it would have been 
possible under the circumstances. But it seemed 
to be part of a pre-conceived plan, though it 
certainly involved loss of time, to allow the popu- 
lace to mix with their soldier-heroes as freely as 
they chose, and so to spread and intensify in all 
classes the delirium of enthusiasm for a most 
popular war. How that regiment re-formed will 
ever remain a mystery to me ; but when I saw it 
again at midday, some ten kilometres outside 
Milan, racing along towards Brescia, it showed 
no sign of the recent turmoil. The men were 
riding four abreast in companies, waving their flags 
and shouting 'Viva V Italia, Viva la Guerra I ' as they 
rode— a splendid bevy of clean-limbed athletes who, 
with their ambulances and transports, made as fine 
a fighting regiment as one could wish to see. 



9H DIE QEOTSCHEN SOLDflTEH 

Italien hat jetzt auch das Schwert fiir die 
gerechle Sache ergriffen. 

Es kampft jetzt auch Schulter an Schulter 
mit den zivilisierten Volkern gegen die Barbaren, 
Liigner, Falscher und Verbrecher. 

Italien hat eiich am 24 Mai 

DEN KRIEG ERKLART 

Italien zieht ins Feld rait: 
;3.000-000 Soldaten 

3*000 Feldgeschotze (fraiizosiscllfi 15 KanoDeil) 
Eine zahireicfieschwere Artillerie (KfOppHe IScm.ODlirraDZnDe I2CID| 

Es ist Gottes Urteil! 



LEAFLET THEOWN BY THE THOUSAND INTO THE GEEMAN LINES FEOM 
FEENCH AEEOPLANES 

To THE German Soldiers 

Italy, too, has now drawn the sword in the cause of justice. She, too, is now fighting 
shoulder to shoulder with the civilised nations — against barbarians, liars, forgers, and 
criminals. 

Italy declared war upon ycu on May 24. Italy brings into the field 2,000,000 
soldiers, 3000 field-guns (French 75 mm.), and numerous heavy artillery (Krupp's 15 cm. 
and French 12 cm.). 

It is the judgment of God ! 



IN ITALY 167 

So much for the external signs to show the 
fine spirit of the Italian people at the present 
critical moment ; but that is only important 
up to a certain point. Much more telling was 
the evidence of quiet preparation to deal with the 
ravages of war, the nursing of the wounded from 
the Front, and the disposition of the refugees 
who arrive by hundreds starving and homeless 
from Austria. In the same calm spirit which 
they evinced when they learned of the loss of 
their ships, the Milanese population have got 
everything in readiness to deal with these two 
important problems. Italy did not waste her 
time during the months which preceded her entry 
into the German War. She had sent a commission 
of experts to study the medical and sanitary 
arrangements — both of Germany and France — at 
the Front, and the fruits of these investigations 
were of immense importance to her when she 
herself was drawn into the vortex. Thanks to 
them, Italy was able to avoid a number of mistakes 
and deficiences from which we, the older Allies, 
had suffered in the earlier stages, and also to 
choose for her example the best among competing 
and very different systems. 

The position of the Red Cross in Italy, as a 



168 WAK PICTURES 

recognised auxiliary of the military establishment, 
was transparently clear from the outset. In it 
there are military grades given and regulation 
uniforms worn by men and women alike ; the 
discipline is as remarkable as the devotion is 
widespread throughout all ranks of both sexes, 
and the same remark applies to the service of 
the Maltese Cross (corresponding to our St. John 
Ambulance Association), which works in perfect 
harmony with the Red Cross. Both of these have 
provided a number of hospital trains, which have 
been running since the beginning of the War, 
each staffed with the personnel of the Society 
which presented them — a priest, religious sisters, 
doctors, and an operating-theatre on each train. 
The Red Cross also run canteens and small emer- 
gency wards — for dressing wounds and minor 
operations — at the principal stations ; these are 
served in shifts of four hours each, each lady 
and gentleman undertaking to take two turns 
in every twenty-four hours. I was allowed to 
visit these at all hours and found them, whether 
in the afternoon or at two o'clock in the morning, 
always busy, always bright, exceedingly efficient 
and immensely appreciated. 

The hospitals in Milan, head quarters of the 



IN ITALY 169 

Third Army in peace-time, number over forty, 
and there are forty more, in the region of which 
Milan is the centre. In the city itself a large 
number of these have had to be improvised, and 
it was in the ' converted ' hospitals that I saw 
the most striking proofs of efficiency and resource. 
An enormous emporium belonging to Signor 
Bocconi — it was described to me as a sort of 
* Whiteley's ' — had been transformed into a hospital 
with 250 beds in the short space of three weeks, 
and it was not difficult to realise that those who 
were responsible for the transformation were 
also connoisseurs in the ' last word ' of up-to-date 
hospital requirements. Then a huge primary 
school in the Via d' Arena was now prepared for 
250 beds, with wonderful Arrangements below- 
stairs for baths and douches, as well as an enor- 
mous kitchen, all provided by the rate-payers for 
the benefit of the children attending the school. 
I visited also a Deaf and Dumb College, now 
full of wounded, a Ladies' Medical College (De 
Marche), which had doubled its bed-accommoda- 
tion and was splendidly equipped with all the 
latest scientific appliances; a beautiful private 
house presented by the Commercial Bank as a 
hospital for officers, and a Training Home for 



170 WAR PICTURES 

Nurses (the Hospital Yolanda), whose Directress 
told me that she had derived all her inspiration 
for the installation of this quite admirable Home 
from similar institutions which she had visited 
in England. She is also superintending the trans- 
formation of the Monastery of Sta Maria delle 
Grazie into a large hospital : this is the insti- 
tution in whose refectory stands the wonderful 
frescoed representation of the Last Supper, by 
Leonardo da Vinci, now hidden and completely 
protected (let us hope) by a mountain of sand- 
bags from the savage assault of an enemy to 
whom the combination of a hospital and a work 
of art has hitherto presented an irresistible 
target. Last but not least, I was shown the 
Hospital Zonda (250 beds), one of the scientific 
glories of the city and worthy in every way to 
be compared to the Rothschild Hospital which 
I visited some years ago in Vienna and then 
considered the best that I had seen in Europe. 
All the foregoing, and many others which un- 
fortunately I had not time to see, were run by 
the Red Cross and do not include an equal number 
of hospitals managed entirely by the military 
authorities. To the principal door of each hospital 
is run a branch tram-line from the trunk system 



IN ITALY 171 

which belongs to the Municipality. This scheme 
was new to me and I was greatly impressed by 
it. Herein lies its value for the wounded : the 
hospital train arrives at the railway station and 
all the light cases are discharged. Instead of 
being conveyed to hospital by half-dozens in 
ambulances which, however carefully driven over 
the streets, must sometimes jolt and jar their 
inmates, these ' sitting-up ' patients are marshalled 
into trams waiting for them at the station and 
are transported in large batches over smooth 
lines to the very door of the institution that is 
waiting to receive them. I saw several trains 
cleared in this way, which is quick, practical, and 
humane ; it is also economical in the long run, 
as it necessitates the use of only sufficient am- 
bulances to convoy the graver cases to hospital. 
Another lesson which Italy has learnt, at 
the beginning of her trial, from taking a close 
interest in the war-experience of other nations, 
is the necessity of helping the War Office to enable 
families to get rapidly into touch with their 
wounded as soon as they arrive in hospital. To 
this end the Ked Cross has organised an Enquiry 
Department at a number of important hospital 
centres, of which Milan is one. Each of these 



172 WAR PICTURES 

is responsible for getting full lists daily from 
every hospital within the area assigned to it and 
also such supplementary information, regarding 
deaths on the battle-field and in the clearing- 
hospitals, as can be supplied by the regimental 
depots situated in each particular region. All 
this information is duly card-indexed and is 
accessible to all enquirers ; it is also sent forward 
in duplicate to Bologna where is the Clearing 
House for all information and for such enquiries 
as cannot be satisfied at the provincial centres. 
In Milan this work occupies a very large staff, 
since the Third Army is one of those most heavily 
engaged at the present stage of military operations, 
and consequently an unending stream of letters 
and visitors pours into the ofiice every day. 
The staff are housed in a big commercial college 
and have ample room for expansion, but, being 
perfectly aware of the rapidity with which their 
work is increasing every week, and will still further 
increase, they do not waste an inch of space, for 
they feel that it will all be wanted soon. The 
organisation for tracing prisoners is centred in 
Rome and is, I hear, in fair working order already, 
thanks to the good relations previously existing 
between the Austrian and Italian Red Cross 



IN ITALY 173 

Societies, who now exchange lists with a regularity 
which is creditable, considering the difficulties of 
inter- communication which confront them both. 

It only remains for me to notice the arrange- 
ments which I saw made for the reception of Italian 
refugees from Austria ; they were coming in very 
fast during the days I spent in Milan. All this 
particular branch of work has been made over 
by the Government to a philanthropic society 
called the Opera Bonamelli which, in peace-time, 
keeps a fatherly eye upon the welfare of Italian 
emigrants to other parts of Europe. Thus they 
have in being a system admirably adapted to do 
exactly this class of work, and it is greatly to the 
credit of the Government that it should have 
employed an existing agency to do the work 
which, on a smaller scale, it has always done, 
rather than invent some new organisation to 
undertake it, or include the care of refugees in 
the responsibilities of one or other of the political 
departments of State. As it is, the work runs 
smoothly enough. The Opera Bonamelli has had 
for a long time one branch with the necessary 
buildings at Buchs, on the Austro-Swiss frontier, 
and another at Chiasso. It is therefore com- 
paratively easy for the Austrians to gather the 



174 WAR PICTURES 

Italians living in the region around the Trentino 
and Trieste and send them in trains to Buchs, 
where they are met by ' missioners ' and escorted 
in another train to Chiasso, and so to Milan where 
they are reclothed and looked after until homes 
are found for them elsewhere in Italy. In this 
work another society at Milan, a SociaHst under- 
taking called the Umanitorio, bears its full part 
and receives its share of the refugees whom war 
has driven back penniless into their own country. 
These, then, were the arrangements that I 
was privileged to see during my flying visit to 
the Sunny South, where a spirit of feverish energy 
and calm capacity has completely ousted the 
dolce far niente school of Hfe. Of the mihtary 
I saw little, except the wounded soldiers returned 
from the Front. But the indomitable spirit of 
these men who have been fighting at altitudes of 
10,000 feet, having dragged up their cannon and 
ammunition and supplies over trackless mountain 
passes of incredible difficulty, is the spirit which 
will carry all before it. Owing to the nature 
of their battle-ground they have suffered priva- 
tions and discomforts unknown to either of the 
opposing armies on the western front — the Austrian 
prisoners say that fighting in the Carpathians 




A GALLANT AUSTRIAN PRISONER (NINETEEN BAYONET WOUNDS) 




AUSTRIAN PRISONER CAMP IN NORTH ITALY 



IN ITALY 175 

was child's play compared to their struggles in 
the Venetian and JuHan Alps — and yet I thought 
these men surpassed all others in the intensity 
of their sheer love of fighting and in their passion 
to get back to death -grips with the foe. 



CHAPTER XIV 

WAR AND THE CHURCH 

The Fall of Materialism — ^The Furnace of Pain — Regeneration — 
Scenes in the Churches — Soldier-Priests — Our Shortage — 
Burial of General Hamilton — ^Mass imder Fire — ^A Funeral 
Sermon — The Hermit — A Belgian Priest — Recognition — 
General de Castehiau 

As we peer into the darkness of the future to try 
to learn what it has in store for the nations of 
the world, I, for one, would wish to be able to see 
how far the cause of religion will be furthered by 
the agonies of the fiery trial through which we 
are now passing. I start with a prejudice ; for 
it is my firm conviction, as it is my fervent hope, 
that the cult of materialism (which is perhaps the 
basic cause of all our troubles — of German aggres- 
sion and of French and British unpreparedness) 
has been riven to its foundations, and that the old 
altars of a fairer faith have already reclaimed 
millions of worshippers who but yesterday staked 
their all upon the omnipotence and omniscience 
of the gods of gold. These have melted away in 
the furnace of war ; from them come neither 

176 



WAR AND THE CHURCH 177 

courage nor consolation : and so a world in tears 
turns back and grasps the outstretched hand of the 
Man of Sorrows. That, at any rate, is my impres- 
sion derived from close attention to this particular 
feature of life in France. 

The Law of Separation was hard enough : 
it parted the Church from the State ; despoiled 
the former of much of its property, and exiled 
large numbers of its personnel. But a Law of 
Separation between Man and God is so hard as 
to be impossible. When wars come, and human 
nature lies naked and bleeding beneath the harrow 
of death, then the State is dissolved in the Man 
and the Church in his Maker : there is no law 
that can keep these apart from one another; the 
prodigal son returns to his Father's home. The 
witness of my own eyes proves this to me, and 
statistics overwhelmingly confirm the evidence 
of my vision. In the course of my journeys, over 
many hundreds of miles in Northern France, I have 
visited scores of churches in town and village — 
morning, noon, and evening, Sunday and week-day 
alike. In all of these one became at last familiar 
with the same phenomenon : large numbers of men 
and women making their Communions at the Low 
Masses, seats crowded at High Mass, churches 



178 WAR PICTURES 

packed for the religious exercises and devotions in 

the afternoons, silent prayer before the altars 

all day long. The Bishop and the parish priest 

point to figures of reclaimed communicants, of 

confessions increased, of baptisms and vows 

renewed — all of wliich support the widespread 

belief that the Faith is coming back to its own. 

As for the festivals, they are all celebrated with 

greater pomp and deeper devotion than for a 

century past— so fervently, indeed, as to cause a 

flutter of anxiety in the hearts of some who still 

wish them evil. In Paris, during Holy Week, 

the sermons of Pere Janvier (the Orateur de Notre- 

Dame) to men only, crowded the nave of that 

marvellous cathedral — wounded and scarred by the 

bombs of the enemy — night after night ; every 

Sunday, from Advent to Trinity, Pere Sertillange 

packed the Madeleine from end to end with a 

congregation that filled the church two hours 

before his sermons began ; the ceremonies of the 

Fete Dieu, also at the Madeleine, when the Holy 

Sacrament is carried in procession round the high 

terrace that encircles the church, seemed almost 

a challenge to the civil authority to interfere at 

its peril. This open-air solemnity was witnessed 

by thousands of people and reached its culminating 



WAE AND THE CHURCH 179 

point in significance and devotion when the parish 
priest, surrounded by his staff of clergy and 
choristers and religious guilds, facing down the 
Rue Royale and across the Seine to the Chamber 
of Deputies, elevated the Host and blessed the 
assembled multitude. So in the villages for Corpus 
Christi : I happened to be travelling through 
Normandy on that Sunday afternoon and saw 
immense processions winding through the streets 
of the larger villages and wayside shrines erected 
in them all. So passionately do men and women 
guard the recovered treasure of which they have 
been robbed, the ideal which they believe to have 
been insulted ; the intensity of their renewed 
protection of it can only be measured by the 
violence of their resentment at the outrage offered. 
And I would add that thousands of those who, 
for this reason or for that, have deserted from the 
Church's colours in time of peace, are now to be 
found in the vanguard of her protectors in the 
day of battle. 

The other day at the Front, I came across some 
little cards that were being distributed among 
the soldiers. Beneath a group of coloured flags they 
bore these simple words : ' Heart of Jesus, be Thou 
the Saviour of France.' This pious ejaculation 

N 2 



180 WAK PICTURES 

disturbed one of the * Free-thought ' journals in 
Paris, which objected thus : ' Does France need 
to be saved — from what ? From the dangers 
by which she is threatened from the men in black 
with their subtle and underground propaganda : 
we know of no other/ To this absurd observation 
the Figaro justly retorted that it savoured of 
exaggeration to suggest that the only danger to 
France just now is ' the peril of the clergy/ 

No, the peril— if peril there be — is to those who 
have for so long traduced the French clergy, in 
every mood and tense, as unpatriotic and un-French. 
To their horror they find some fifty thousand 
priests and five hundred Abbes and several Bishops 
serving in the ranks of the Army, often mentioned 
in the orders of the day and receiving decorations 
for valour upon many a field of battle ! I have 
read letters from the Front in which their lay- 
comrades pay unsurpassed tributes to the serene 
heroism of the soldier-priests beside them; I 
have even been jealous that, in the ranks of the 
British Army, so small a place is found for our 
clergy — and I, for one, shall never rest content 
until room is found for at least one priest in 
every hospital and one with every regiment in 
reserve. Gradually, by slow degrees, we are 



WAR AND THE CHURCH 181 

improving in this direction, but we are still lament- 
ably short of spiritual ammunition for the protec- 
tion of the souls of our troops. I am, of course, 
conscious of the ' denominational ' diflftculties in 
regiments of ' mixed ' religions, but even these 
are not insurmountable. At Verdun, for example, 
this very question arose with regard to the burial 
of a large number of soldiers belonging to the 
Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish faiths in the 
French Army. Everybody agreed that some 
religious ceremony was obligatory, and therefore 
the priest and the pastor and the Rabbi — all 
military chaplains — went together to the cemetery. 
The Rabbi, as senior chaplain, delivered the address 
and offered a general prayer ; after which the priest 
in Latin, the pastor in French, and the Rabbi in 
Hebrew, said their customary prayers over the 
graves of their respective co-religionists. 

I recognise also the difficulties attendant upon 
the fact that, in our Army, the chaplain has at 
present to be a mounted non-combatant officer, 
whose existence at the Front entails a number of 
non-effective mouths to feed ; for this reason the 
number of chaplains has to be strictly Kmited. 
But the civilian is entitled to wonder whether 
these difficulties would not disappear supposing 



182 WAR PICTURES 

each infantry battalion had its own chaplain 
with it — not necessarily a commissioned ofiicer — 
marching and messing with his unit, instead of 
one priest having to career upon a horse over 
miles of country to endeavour to minister to the 
spiritual wants of a whole brigade. It is all really 
a question of the right conception of the place that 
religion must play in the life and death of man, and 
of the help that its authorised ministers can give 
to our soldiers when their need is greatest. The 
Germans in one way, the French in quite another, 
provide the necessary benefit of clergy ; I wish that 
I felt I could assert that our country does the same. 
The following short stories, which I have 
either heard or read during the past year, give 
some idea of the lives of priests at the Front. I 
hope that the sources from which I have derived 
them will forgive this reproduction, without per- 
mission, of human documents which redound to 
the credit and courage of those who are sometimes 
cruelly alluded to as ' the black peril." 

The Burial of General Hamilton 

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note. 

In the dead of night, beneath a veil of impene- 
trable darkness, small groups of soldiers were 



WAR AND THE CHURCH 183 

gathered together. Representatives of the General 
Staff, a few French officers attached to the 
British Army, some non-commissioned officers 
and men (whose faces I could not see, for no gleam 
of light was possible at this spot, so close to the 
enemy's lines) were assembled in a deserted village 
to pay their last homage to the memory of a gallant 
officer who had died for the common cause. That 
very morning he had been killed outright by a 
single shrapnel bullet whilst riding about among 
]n^ troops. In the evening, under the gracious 
cover of darkness, an ambulance went out to 
recover the body and bring it back to the village 
where, with striking simplicity, the warrior was 
laid to his last rest. Slowly, in the black night, 
the procession passed down the death-still street, 
lined on either side by a double rank of soldiers — 
grim silhouettes, fully armed and expecting a 
night attack at any moment. So to the cemetery, 
by the little church whose roof and altar alike 
have been shattered by shell from the German 
guns. There they had prepared the grave for 
their beloved chief, and there they laid him down. 
But the service had scarcely begun when there 
burst upon the chill night air the familiar but 
ever fearsome sound of cannon : a shell, another, 



184 WAE PICTURES 

a hundred more ; the deafening sound of terrific 
firing all round us ; bullets whistling over our heads 
as we stood by the side of the tomb. It was the 
expected attack from a few hundred yards away. 

Did Heaven decree that the enemy should 
choose just this solemn moment to engage us, and 
that we should be firing ball-cartridge across his 
grave not only to salute his memory, but, alas ! 
to avenge his death ? 

Yet, amid all this roar of battle, thundering 
tempestuously round the walls of the village 
chuch, the priest, in calm and even tones, continued 
and concluded the service for the Burial of the 
Dead. 

Mass under Fire 

In the last five days there have been five des- 
perate street fights outside our hospital. The 
Sisters found bullets in their beds, and eight shells 
fell on their convent. The fury of the cannonading 
was maddening. 

Last Friday, a soldier-priest got leave to come 
and say Mass in the chapel attached to the hospital. 
Another priest from the Red Cross assisted him 
as a server. 

' Come along. Sister,' said the soldier, ' we 



WAR AND THE CHURCH 185 

haven't time for long meditations this morning : 
our moments are very precious.' So we got 
everything ready and Mass began : the server's 
responses were entirely drowned by the noise 
of the guns outside. . . . He was really a brave 
young fellow, but very pale, I thought, and rather 
absent-minded perhaps. No doubt he could not 
help following the course of the battle, even 
on his knees. We reached the Offertory ... a 
grinding crash fell upon the chapel ... a fearful 
explosion shook the hospital to its base ... a long, 
long moan of anguish followed as four poor officers 
were carried away on stretchers. The priest, who 
had paused for a moment, went on with his prayers, 
but his server seemed turned to stone as he knelt 
huddled against the wall, saying no responses 
and ringing no bell. Our Superior made signs 
to him, but they had no effect at all. The Sisters 
knelt down to receive their Communion when 
another shell burst right over us, smashing every 
window in the place. This time it fell just outside 
the west-end door. In the heart of this hell the 
Sisters made their Communion, . . . but nothing 
could rouse our server from his trance. 

When he came to himself, the Superior said : 
' But, my dear Father, you quite forgot the 



186 WAE PICTURES 

ablutions : you must be very distraught this 
morning.' 

' Forgive me, Mother,' he answered, ' I believe 
I was mummified.^ And perhaps he was, for the 
moment; but since then he has won the much 
coveted medal for bravery in the field. 

A Funeral Sermon 
At last, Sunday broke and our turn was over ; 
but it was ' hot ' while it lasted. We brought 
the battery out of action through a ruined street 
and unharnessed our horses. Then we washed 
and brushed ourselves as best we could, and 
retired to a shell-torn barn to hear Mass. The 
captain of our guns was a priest ; his altar a few 
empty cartridge-boxes, upon which he laid the 
stone. He vested very quickly — but his fatigue 
cap looked rather odd doing duty for a biretta. 
Of course we had a sermon, and a very good one 
too. Our priest's sermons sound just like a 
fellow talking to his friends. First of all he told 
us to pray for all for whom he was going to 
offer the Mass. Then he added, ' Particularly I 
recommend to your prayers the German artillery- 
men whom we have just destroyed/ and he recited 
the ' De Profundis/ 



WAE AND THE CHUECH 187 

The Hermit 

On the Franco- Belgian frontier, not two- 
hundred yards from the German trenches, hves 
a hermit in his cell ! Before the War he was a 
monk, now he is in charge of a battery of artillery 
and lives in a sort of cock-loft in a cliff, which 
he has converted into an artillery observation 
post, which he has not left for the last six weeks. 
It is a long climb up to his cell— a tiny little cave- 
dwelhng furnished with a straw mattress, a broken 
chair, a rickety table, and a dark lantern ;— that 
is all. His men are relieved every twenty-four 
hours ; but he never ' quits,^ as the Americans 
say, though his only means of communication 
with the outer world is the telephone that speaks 
to head quarters. Now and then, when things 
are quiet, they can get food to him, but his position 
is too exposed to allow of this happening often. 
At one time he had to go three days without 
any drinking-water; but he was quite cheerful 
and slaked his thirst by getting a little of the 
briny water from the floods (whose contents are, 
as you know, horrible in the extreme), boiling 
it, and moistening his lips with the drops of steam 
that formed on the lid of his little saucepan. 



188 WAR PICTURES 

The other day a shell paid him a visit; but 
although it exploded in his cell, he got ofi with 
a burnt finger. 

If you ask him whether life under such solitary 
conditions is not intolerable, he says, ' Oh dear 
no ! I never was so happy. The time passes 
like lightning. I do my ' house-work ' ; I keep 
an eye on my men below, I telephone my obser- 
vations, and my conscience tells me that I am 
of some use to my country." 

The words ' Vive le Roi ' are scratched with a 
penknife on the bare wall of the cell : these 
and his little crucifix represent the whole duty 
of this soldier-saint. 

A Belgian Pkiest 

Nieuport in Belgium has been the scene of 
many tragedies since the War began, and among 
the saddest was the pathetic end of the aged 
priest of St. George. The terrors of the War at 
last became too much for him : a shell burst in his 
presbytery, and the soldiers only just managed 
to save him from death beneath the ruins. Then 
he went mad and wandered about the country, 
sometimes getting right into the line of fire. 

One day he was discovered grubbing about 



WAR AJ^D THE CHURCH 189 

in a ditch wherein the Germans had recently 
buried some of their dead. He thought they 
had also hidden there a statue of the Blessed 
Virgin which they had stolen out of his church. 
The Belgian troopers had to drag him by force 
into one of their trenches and keep him there, 
as the enemy fire was intensely fierce at that 
moment. Suddenly the old man imagined that 
it was time for him to go to church for Evensong, 
but he was not allowed to move. Then, in his 
dear old broken voice, he began to sing the * Salve 
Regina," and a thrill of deep emotion surged 
along the trench. 

His last adventure was upon a broken-down 
old horse which he had picked up on the battle-field, 
wounded and limping painfully along on three legs. 
He climbed on to its back and rode down the lines, 
shouting to the soldiers, ' Courage ! Hold fast, 
my sons ! I am St. George. The Day of Judgment 
is breaking. St. George is ever victorious.' 

Amid a hail of shells he proceeded, until one 
burst just in front of him ; whereupon his decrepid 
steed took fright and bolted towards the village. 
The next shell wounded the old man and unseated 
him ; his foot caught in the stirrup, and he was 
dragged head downwards over the cruel paving 



190 WAR PICTURES 

stones of the village street. Unconscious, he was 
carried on, until the debris of a falling factory- 
buried both horse and rider in its ruins. 

Who will deny that such exhibitions of courage, 
endurance, and martyrdom, of which the foregoing 
narratives are but samples, are no more than good 
seed sown in a barren land ?j Who will suggest that, 
when this bloody war is over, the men who grasped 
the hand of their chaplain-comrade in the hour 
of supreme anguish, who received from him in 
the trenches the Sacrament which brings comfort 
and courage, will spurn that hand in the coming 
days of peace ? Already we can read, if we will, 
the testimony of thousands of families in France 
to the devotion with which the soldier-almoner 
soothed the last moments of their soldier-sons — 
such ministrations will not be counted against the 
agents of the ' black peril,' but will break down 
the parliamentary barrier raised between the 
Church and the nation. The Bulletin des Armies 
and the Journal Offlciel have, in almost every 
issue, their story of gallantry and splendid heroism 
to record in favour of men and women who have 
taken the religious vows and are now working 
under fire in trench and hospital. The strength 




GENERAL DE CASTLENAU 



WAE AND THE CHURCH 191 

of the supernatural is once more familiar in 
France ; there is nothing more usual now than an 
exchange of letters between Generals-in-Command 
and Bishops in whose dioceses they are operating. 
I quote from a note written by General de Castelnau 
to the Archbishop of Auch : — 

More than ever do I now feel how tremendous 
a part is played in this war, as elsewhere, by what 
we choose to call the great ' Unknown.' This 
Unknown is manifestly controlled by Him who 
knows all, sees all, directs all. 

I thank you for your fervent prayers to the 
Most High that He will bless our arms, and that He 
will enlighten me, the humble instrument of His 
holy will. It is a comfort to me to have the support 
of such souls as yours ; it increases my confidence 
in the ultimate result. . . . 

So too, from other sources, we can anticipate 
the splendour of coming events. A Free-thinker 
— or one who gave himself out to be such in 
peace-time — writes thus from the battle-field to 
his wife : — 

Above all, teach our little one to say his 
prayers. Go to Mass yourself. You will think 
of me upon your knees. 

Another, on the eve of going into action, 
said frankly to the priest, ' Monsieur le Cure, 
I have no religion, but I do want to meet my wife 



192 WAE PICTURES 

in a future life ; what must I do ? ' ' Prepare 
yourself, dear friend, and you will see her : as 
for religion, you must truly confess that you believe 
what Holy Church believes.' ' So be it, Monsieur 
le Cure ; will you hear my confession ? ' ^ 

The fight in France has been a long one between 
Faith and Agnosticism ; both have fought their 
hardest, and the casualties have been heavy among 
the children of Light. Now, from the ' Great 
Unknown,' have come the reinforcements of 
suffering and sorrow ; they have stemmed the 
tide of battle ; they are marching with the Church 
to victory. 

1 Read Le Clerge, Les Catholiques, et La Ouerre, by Gabriel 
Langlois. 



CHAPTER XV 

FROM MY DAY-BOOK 

The Ickon — Legend of Arras — Czenstochowa — Saint Sofia — ^A Spy- 
Story — Christmas in Lille 

There is an interesting legend connected with the 
ickon which was hurriedly sent for whilst the 
present King of Greece lay in a critical condition 
during his recent illness. I translate the story 
from a Greek newspaper, the Athens Messenger : 

In the early days of the War of Independence 
an old gardener in Tinos saw the Most Holy in 
a dream. ' Dig thou diligently in the field of 
Doxaras : there shalt thou find My ickon.' 

So the old gardener and his friends did as they 
were connnanded, and digged in the field of Doxaras, 
but discovered naught save an ancient oven that 
had been fashioned out of bricks. Once more, in the 
year following, the Holy Spirit appeared — in the 
guise of a lady, beautiful, but sad — to Sister Pelagia 
of the Monastery of Saint Nicolas. 

' Dig thou diligently in the field of Doxaras : 
why have ye tarried so long in the building of 
Mine House ? ' 

So they digged again; but there was not one 
who laiew that in the year One Thousand a church, 

193 o 



194 WAR PICTURES 

afterwards burnt by the Saracens, had stood upon 
that place where they digged. 

There they found the ruins of the church, the 
sacred vessels and the candlesticks, and a stream 
of pure water flowed beneath the stones. So they 
builded a church over it, and it was dedicated 
to the Fountain of Life, which is the Mother of 
God. 

A year later the Holy Spirit appeared again 
to the Sister and commanded: 'Dig deeper yet. ^ 

' We have digged all, Most Holy, and have 
builded Thee Thy temple.' 

' Dig on, until thou hast uncovered My ickon.^ 

So they continued to dig, until at length 
the image was uncovered. 

And in that moment did the Mother of God show 
forth Her presence by a miracle. For the plague 
which scourged the island did immediately cease 
from destroying the people.' 

Such was the tradition of yesterday ; and now 
we learn that no sooner had His Majesty clasped 
this ickon to his breast than the agonies ceased 
and the King made progress toward recovery. 
The Queen, in thanksgiving for the miracle, 
took a favourite jewel from her necklace to decorate 
the frame of the ickon. 

• But,' the Athens Messenger goes on to state, 
' since the German professors Krauss and Eilsels- 
berg have arrived upon the scene from Berlin, the 
royal patient has not been feeling so well.' It 



FKOM MY DAY-BOOK 195 

is a curious fact that these learned gentlemen 
left Athens the next day after the recent elections. 

The Holy Candle of Akeas 
Arras is laid waste by war, but the church of 
Notre-Dame des Ardents still stands uninjured 
by German shell fire. Herein rests a relic, ten 
centuries old — ^the Holy Candle — encased in a 
shrine of silver and enamel, given to the Church 
in 1421 by Jean de Sasquepee, the Lord of Beaudi- 
mont and Mayor of Arras. The legend runs that, 
in 1105, a terrible plague depopulated Arras, and 
men were at their wits' end for fear. But on a 
certain night the Holy Virgin appeared to two 
troubadors, Normand and Stiers, and put into 
their hands a taper, with an assurance that, 
if pure water were mixed with its wax, the sick 
and dying would be cured of their plague. The 
precious ointment thus miraculously given was 
handed to Lambert, the Bishop of Arras, who 
apphed the remedy with instant success, and in 
gratitude founded the Community of Les 
Ardents, which has jealously guarded this 
mysterious treasure down to this present day. 

Across the ages it has ever been the salvation 
of Arras from foreign domination, if not always 

o 2 



196 WAR PICTURES 

from bombardment and siege. The Atrebates 
(inhabitants of Arras) are secure in their behef 
that the miracle of the Holy Candle will soon be 
performed once more to preserve them from the 
hateful rule of the modern Huns. 

[Translation : December 1914, 

Our Lady of Czenstochowa 
In the early days of October 1914, the Emperor 
William II of Germany made his head quarters 
in the Convent of Yasna Gova in Poland ; there, 
too, he made his first great mistake, in the country 
where defeat awaited him, and the immediate 
result was the uprising of the whole Polish 
population against the invader. Only those who 
understand the spirit of Poland will appreciate 
the intimate connection between the cause and 
this effect. The Poles are less wedded to their 
worldly possessions, to their estates, or even to 
their lives, than they are to their Faith. They 
are far less anxious to take vengeance for their 
houses laid in ashes and for their ruined crops 
than to requite the outrages levelled at the God 
of their fathers. So the Germans could have 
hurled at Poland no insult more poignant than 
the violation of the sanctuary of Czenstochowa. 



FROM MY DAY-BOOK 197 

This little town clusters round the Convent 
of Yasna Gova, ' the City of Light,' a fortress- 
sanctuary, a place of refuge and prayer (like so 
many other mediaeval monasteries), which possesses 
the palladium of Polish Catholicism — a picture 
of the Blessed Virgin holding the infant Jesus 
in her arms. Legend ascribes to St. Luke himself 
the painting of this portrait, which the Empress 
St. Helena has venerated. It was brought by 
Prince Leo into Galicia in very early days, and 
in 1382 a certain Duke Vladislas, the founder 
of the Convent of Yasna-Gova, entrusted it to 
the care of that community as shield and buckler 
against the ravages of the Tartar hosts. In 
Polish history Czenstochowa was constantly 
menaced, but fearful chastisement was the in- 
variable fate of those who attempted to invade 
the sanctuary of Our Lady. Never was the 
result of her powerful protection more clearly 
manifested than in the famous siege of 1655 by 
Charles Gustavus. He had subdued the whole 
of Poland ; his armies completely overwhelmed 
the country, leaving desolation and ruin in their 
wake. Poland seemed dead — she was to be re- 
born at Czenstochowa. 

The invader had solemnly guaranteed by 



198 WAE PICTURES 

Letters Patent the inviolability of their convent ; 
he had sworn that it should never know the burden 
of miUtary occupation. But perjury had no more 
terrors for him than it has for a more modern 
monarch of another country. His troops were 
consumed with a desire to ravage the treasures 
consecrated to the Virgin, to profane a spot 
sacred to Poland beyond all others. As else- 
where — and as to-day — his soldiers thought nothing 
of gambling in the churches, of broaching their 
casks of beer upon the altars, nor of celebrating 
their disgusting rites in the very presence of the 
Glorious Master of the Tabernacle. Charles 
Gustavus treated his Letters Patent as ' mere 
scraps of paper ' ; and so, one day at dusk, his 
valiant army, ten thousand strong, appeared 
before the town to make mincemeat of a garrison 
which consisted of the Abbot with seventy poor 
monks and ten score of the peasants and gentry 
of the neighbourhood. The invaders issued their 
decree, and thus it ran : ' In the name of the Most 
Serene King of the Goths and Vandals . . . Grand 
Duke of Bremen, Stettin . . . etc.,' the monks 
resident are summoned ' to entrust their monastery 
to the safe custody of the General without fear, 
in so far as the exigencies of war can provide 



FROM MY DAY-BOOK 199 

it.' How like the sort of ultimatum sent by- 
William II, or by one of his generals, to the King 
of the Belgians, or to one or other of the brave 
cities in Flanders ! 

As I have said, the town was not fortified ; 
for no one, in those days, imagined that either 
Tartar or heathen hosts would lay hands upon 
a sacred city. And yet, by some divine in- 
spiration, these indomitable monks declined to 
surrender. They had no confidence in the enemy, 
who added infidelity to the perjured oath of their 
employer. They refused point-blank to yield 
their monastery to the unbeliever or their sanctuary 
into the hands of sacrilege. Thus began the 
famous siege, by ten thousand trained soldiers 
against a mere handful of men armed, for the 
most part, with flails and pitch- forks and scythes. 
For thirty-eight days it lasted ; generals of 
renown, the best of artillery, schemed and thundered 
against the town, but in vain. In vain they sent 
for their heaviest mortars and shelled the ram- 
parts ; it made no difference. Nothing could 
shatter the courage or the serenity of these 
splendid knights of the Virgin, who, though under 
fire of the most severe description, marched 
daily round the battlements, chanting their 



200 WAR PICTURES 

canticles and carrying the Blessed Sacrament in 
procession. 

At last the general, surprised and discouraged, 
retired ; the resurrection of Poland crucified 
was accomplished. The words of St. Augustine 
were brought to mind : ' Non tolHt Gothus quod 
custodit Christus ' — ' The Goth cannot seize the 
possession of Christ.' 

The echoes of this battle waged against Our 
Lady reverberated throughout all Poland, from 
the Baltic to the Black Sea ; from the Carpathian 
Mountains to the Steppes of Russia. At the news 
of this act of sacrilege, the nation rose as one 
man to avenge the outrage and repel the enemy, 
the implacable foe of nationality and Faith. Once 
more the Blessed Mother gave birth to the soul 
of a people, and by their courage her wrongs were 
redressed. 

Charles Gustavus was defeated. How will it 
fare with William II of Germany ? He, too, has 
invaded a peaceful population ; he has broken 
his pledged word, has tried to intimidate those 
whom he could not seduce to turn Poland from 
the path of duty. True, Czenstochowa lost her 
city walls under the Emperor Alexander I, and 
resistance is now impossible ; but she remains a 



FEOM MY DAY-BOOK 201 

Holy Place that has never been assaulted with 
impunity. All Poland is now in arms against 
the foreign iconoclast. His defeat is at hand ; 
the expiation of his sacrilege is assured. 

[Translation : November 1914. 

Saint Sofia — Constantinople 
Not long ago, I remember our guide showing us, 
high up on the inner shell of the vast dome of the 
cathedral, the shadowy outhne of a gigantic 
crucifix. One's eyes had to become accustomed 
to the solemn twilight of that great Byzantine 
basiUca before it was possible to discern, across 
the glimmer of the hanging lamps, the Divine 
Figure traced in golden mosaic which the Turks, 
after taking Constantinople, had hidden beneath 
a thick layer of Oriental whitewash. But the 
orthodox faithful, living on the banks of the 
Bosphorus, ' the sweet waters of Asia," have a 
tradition that when this image of God Crucified 
is again visible, the reign of the Sultans of Turkey 
will be at an end. 

Week by week, during the past few months, 
the picture of the Crucifixion is emerging more and 
more distinctly from its shroud of chalk : the 
features of the Christ, the lines of the Cross, are 



202 WAE PICTURES 

now definite and distinct. There is still something 
like a morning haze between the spectator and 
this interesting mosaic, but the Sun of Victory 
will soon disperse the remaining shadows, and then 
at last the Christians will gaze upon the picture 
before which Justinian prayed. 

[Translation : April 1915. 

Home Again 

In France some Alsatian soldiers were discussing 
the first thing they would do when they had won 
back the province for France. Said one of them : 
' I shall go straight to the churchyard where my 
people He buried. I shall dig a deep hole and 
cry aloud to them, ' We have returned." 

The Changelings 

{Told hy a French Gendarme) 

One afternoon when we were waiting about 
and smoking our pipes beside a little wood on the 
flank of our reserve trenches, we noticed a fine- 
looking sergeant-inspector of poHce and two 
ordinary constables advancing towards us, in 
charge of a German Uhlan prisoner. They were 
walking quite leisurely, and appeared to take the 
utmost interest in all that they saw. Our fellows 



FROM MY DAY-BOOK 203 

in the advance trenches greeted them with a 
cheer, and they returned it with a will. As they 
approached us our sergeant whispered 'Atten- 
tion/ and we all sprang to our feet. ' Prepare 
to fire/ he said ; ' three gendarmes to one Uhlan 
is — odd.' When they were quite close we moved 
out from the shelter of the wood and challenged 
them. 

' Who goes there ? Show us your papers.' 

' Who are you ? ' replied the ' sergeant- 
inspector.' 

' Who am I ? Out with your papers and up 
with your hands ! ' was the answer. 

Like one man we all had our rifles at the 
* present.' 

' kamerades ! ' whimpered the two con- 
stables and the Uhlan. 

' kamerades ! ' faltered the ' sergeant- 
inspector ' — and the game was up. 

We bound the spies together in pairs and 
brought them into camp. 

A Midnight Mass 

Lille, December 24, 1914. 

To-morrow is Christmas Day. What can be 
happening in France ? I hear no Christmas bells. 



204 WAE PICTUEES 

For two months I have been imprisoned in this 
invested city — and to-morrow is Christmas Day. 

From my little attic-window I can see right 
over the roofs of my native town ; its chimneys 
are smoking. I wonder whether our little ones 
in the nurseries below are watching and waiting 
for Father Christmas with his load of presents, 
as they did last year when life was — oh ! so sweet ! 

Lille seems quite noisy to-night. The cold 
wind freezes and scares me. It comes from far 
across the broads of the Yser. It has scoured the 
field of battle ; its breath has quickened the cheery 
wood fires in the trenches. To me it wafts a sense 
of dampness, the scent of blood upon the soaking 
earth. 

I hear German soldiers laughing as they march 
along the streets. They are going into the hotel 
across the way, to eat and drink round the lighted 
Christmas Tree. They are talking very loud ; 
their conversation is my despair. I must not give 
way, though. I will go out, too, dressed like a 
peasant in the miserable old great-coat that they 
have given me. It is nine o'clock. I know a 
little chapel in a back street where a few French 
people are sure to meet for the midnight Mass ; 
I will go in there. . . . 



FROM MY DAY-BOOK 205 

Long shall I remember this Christmas eve ; 
as long as my life is spared. A few candles stand 
upon the altar ; kneeling before it are some Red 
Cross Sisters in their white head-dresses, some 
children, and a group of old men. Five Bavarians, 
sad-eyed young fellows of about nineteen, come 
in and kneel down beside us. I wonder why 
they should invade even our tiny sanctuary ; 
they cannot prevent us praying. 

The little silver-tongued church bell chimes 

out its message into the Christmas sky — in tones 

that are as pure as the light, as bright as hope. 

It is midnight. Here comes our old priest, vested 

in his best chasuble. He gazes gravely upon us 

and blesses us ; even the Bavarians bend low to 

receive so unique a blessing. So Mass begins. 

I see some poor girls crouching in the doorway ; 

they are all in mourning. I hear the notes of a 

violin coming from the organ-loft, and voices 

are raised in the Christmas hymn : — 

He is born, our heavenly King, 
Shepherds pipe whilst angels sing. 

Ah ! Christmas, Christmas ! no bastard 
authority, no wanton barbarities, no brute force 
can prevail against thee. Never have we known 
thee so pure, so lovely, as in this captive city in 



206 WAK PICTURES 

the year of our torture. Never have we grasped 
so surely the lesson of thy simplicity ; on this 
night we waken to its wondrous beauty. Across 
the centuries thy voice rings out : ' I am the 
Christmas of the French; lift up your hearts, 
and God will guard you.' An old lady beside me 
is quietly crying ; she has four sons at the Front. 
As she bends low to pray, I notice that her fore- 
head just touches the shoulder of one of the 
Bavarians. She feels it, straightens herself, stiffens, 
and dries her eyes. . . . 

The priest had said his third Mass ; we left 
the chapel and went our separate ways. All the 
streets were deserted ; the shutters were closed. 
The only sounds came from the public- houses 
wherein the German soldiery were allowed to 
carouse all through that sacred night. 

There was no sound of cannons ; so our children 
in their warm little beds dreamed calmly on of 
General Joffre's zouaves tumbling down the 
chimney to guard them through their sleep. 

[Translation from the diary of a prisoner 
in Lille : February 1915. 




A copy of this drawing was sent on 



THE CHRISTMAS ANGEL 

By MAURICE NEUMOXT 
(Reproduced by kind permission of tlie Artist) 

Christmas Eve to every French soldier at tlie Front. 



CHAPTER XVI 

DOGS OF WAR 

Dispatch -dogs — Four-footed Searchers — Wounded and Missing — 
Societe Nationale — A Popular Movement — Training the Dogs 
— The Barbizon School — Killed in Action 

When I was attached to the British Embassy 
in Berlin some twenty years ago the Germans 
were just beginning to examine the question of 
the utihty of dogs in time of war, mainly as 
dispatch -runners, and to make experiments with 
them. The results were so satisfactory that a 
mihtary organisation was set up to choose and 
train dogs for this purpose, and now I hear that 
the German Army has something like 30,000 dogs 
working for it. The advantages of using dogs 
rather than men for carrying messages across 
country that is exposed to enemy fire are so 
obvious that I need not dwell upon them ; but 
this is not the only use to which a properly trained 
dog can be put. He makes a wonderful sentry 
with the soldier on outpost duty at night, for he 
hears sounds that are inaudible to most human 

207 



208 WAR PICTURES 

ears, and he is taught to communicate his in- 
formation to his master by the merest whisper 
of a growl, having learnt that, at all times and 
in all places, barking is quite inadmissible. Then 
his power of scent also is requisitioned— this time 
by the Medical and Red Cross authorities— to trace 
wounded men who, for one reason or another, 
have not been picked up during or immediately 
after a battle. In old days, but not so very 
long ago, large numbers of men were accounted 
' missing ' who had really died from exposure 
after their wounds, received in places where they 
could not be found. In the Franco- German 
War of 1870, for example, there were over 4000 
Germans and close on 12,000 French reported 
' missing ' ; in the Russo-Japanese War in Man- 
churia, Follenfant estimates that on the Russian 
side 41 per thousand officers and 71 per thousand 
men ' disappeared,' whilst Doctor Matignon calcu- 
lates that 53 Japanese officers and 5021 soldiers 
were ' missing ' at the close of that campaign, 
and the wars in the Balkans gave similar evidence 
on about the same scale. 

To reduce the number of casualties of this 
kind — more painful perhaps than any other— all 
armies have increased their ambulance and 



DOGS OF WAR 209 

stretcher-bearer sections, whose duty it is, as 
soon as possible after an action, to quarter the 
ground and retrieve the helpless fallen. But it 
is obvious that in battles which last for weeks 
at a time, as they do in the present War, these 
expedients are comparatively useless, and recourse 
must be had to other methods. One French 
doctor invented a whistle, attached in some way 
to the soldier's identity disc, which he could blow 
when he could no longer call for assistance ; 
this seemed practical until it was realised that, 
after engagements wherein the wounded could 
be counted by thousands, the sound of so many 
whistles would confuse and impede the operations 
of the Medical Corps. Another suggestion was 
that aeroplanes could scour the battle-field for 
wounded and report the result of their recon- 
naissance to the hospital authorities. But this, 
too, had to be discarded as impracticable : for 
the aeroplane could only search during the day- 
time, and from a considerable height, over open 
land. Its observer would fail to perceive the 
victim, motionless but alive, who has fallen in 
a deserted farm-house or has dragged himself 
to the cover of a plantation or the shelter of a 
neighbouring trench or dug-out. I need not add 



210 WAE PICTURES 

that these expedients were considered and found 
wanting long before the opening of the present 
War, whose conditions would instantly preclude 
even experimenting with either of them. 

Many years after the Germans had begun to 
create their army of dispatch -dogs, some French 
ladies and gentlemen founded in Paris an organisa- 
tion called the Societe Nationale du Chien Sanitaire, 
whose special function it was to train dogs to 
find the wounded hidden in the dark places of 
the battle-field. They called to mind, doubtless, the 
achievements of the famous race of St. Bernards, 
the prowess of the Parisian poHce-dogs, the cunning 
of the mongrel smugglers between Gibraltar and 
Algeciras, and determined to bend all the endur- 
ance and courage and adaptibility of the canine race 
to this one purpose of noble philanthropy. The 
idea, warmly supported by the French miHtary 
authorities, received a large measure of public 
favour, and the society, though only a small one, 
was able to offer several hundred dogs to the Army 
on the outbreak of war. These are being added 
to month by month, as new recruits pass the stiff 
tests to which they are subjected before they are 
allowed to leave the kennel for the Front. Already 
several branch organisations have been started, 







D03S OF WAR WITH RED CROSS BADGES 



DOGS OF WAR 211 

and dogs are sent from far and near to be trained 
and used — either as gifts outright to the Army 
or as loans ' for the duration of the War/ At first 
the Society received all sorts of ineligible candidates, 
cho^^'s and griffons and fox-terriers, but these had 
to be returned with thanks, for they all lacked 
the stamina which are essential for dogs that must 
be able to endure rain and cold and to work 
without food for many hours at a stretch. The 
most welcome recruits were those of the ' sheep- 
dog ' class — to give it a generic if unscientific 
name — for their noses are excellent, their intel- 
ligence is keen, and their coats are impervious to 
weather. In appearance they differ greatly from 
one another : curly -coated dogs from Brittany, 
smooth coats from Belgium, rough fellows from 
Alsace, and others of the Airedale and Scottish 
colhe breeds, but all of them young and intelligent 
and desperately keen. 

By the kindness of Mme. KJresser, the Lady- 
President, whose husband (the Secretary -General 
of the Society) is now serving at the Front, I was 
able to see something of the early training of these 
dogs in a large waste space not twenty minutes 
from the centre of Paris. There they have a kennel 
of about thirty dogs, who get their first lessons 

p 2 



212 WAK PICTURES 

in searching for wounded on ground as unlike the 
real thing as you can well imagine. A deep trench 
is dug here, a culvert is there ; in one corner a 
gravel-pit, in another a square space enclosed 
with wire-netting fifteen feet high. One by one 
the dogs were had out for their lessons, and we 
saw them at all stages of proficiency : the raw 
recruit who had just arrived from the country, 
the half-broken dog, and the perfected article — 
a two-year old pohce-dog, whose performances 
were quite amazing. 

The dog is loosed into the large field ; his 
business is to pick up the scent of a wounded man. 
He seems to work partly by scent and partly by 
sight, but very soon he has found his quarry lying 
far back behind a bank, and we next see him 
galloping back to his master with the man's 
cap between his teeth. Then, quick as lightning, 
the trainer puts the dog on a long leash and off 
he goes back to the wounded man, dragging his 
master after him at a tremendous pace, never 
slacking until he has brought human help to 
the sufferer. Of course the dogs varied in pro- 
ficiency, in rapidity of action, and certainty of 
scent, according to the length of their training, but 
ail of them seemed to have a wonderful aptitude 



DOGS OF WAE 213 

for the work. The exhibition dog was marvellous 
in these respects : with the pace of a greyhound 
and the nose of a first-class pointer he picked up 
the scent at once, raced for the wired cage, sprang 
up the netting with the agility of a panther and 
dropped on the inside beside his man ; back over 
the netting again, with scarcely any ' take-ofi * 
to help him, and within five minutes from start 
to finish the dog had brought first-aid to the 
wounded. 

On another occasion I saw these dogs being 
schooled near Barbizon, in the forest of Fontaine- 
bleau, a much higher trial but attended with the 
greatest success. It was a far more difficult matter, 
so one would have thought, to hunt up and retrieve 
the wounded in the leafy forest and among fallen 
trees and undergrowth, but it made no kind of 
difference to the dogs. And I was particularly 
struck with their exceeding gentleness ; when I 
was hiding, at full length, in a bed of high bracken, 
a dog sprang into my lair and, with the tender- 
ness of a nurse, picked up the handkerchief which 
covered my face and sped ofi to his master. This 
was a Belgian police-dog, which growled fiercely 
and always showed a set of very fine teeth if one 
approached him in his kennel. 



214 WAR PICTURES 

The departure of these dogs to the Front, a score 
of them at a time, is always attended by a popular 
demonstration. The newspapers announce the 
rendezvous, in the Tuileries Gardens or in the 
Bois ; the dogs arrive wearing their Red Cross 
jackets and attended each by his own orderly. 
They are paraded and inspected by a General, and 
then they are dismissed to a convoy of ambulance- 
cars which take them to the railway station where 
they entrain for the Front. 

I hope that before long the British Army 
will employ this four-footed means both for 
dispatch-running and for tracing the wounded. 
The French Society have already given one dog 
to the Duke of Wellington's regiment at the 
Front, and are both willing and anxious to send us 
more. After seeing a number of these trials, 
as well as many letters bearing witness to their 
great usefulness and reliability under fire, I am 
convinced in my own opinion that there is a 
great field of service open to such a society if 
formed in England, and if, as in France, it is 
supported by the good- will and generous assistance 
of the War Office. 

The following simple quatrain, written by an 
orderly in charge of a dog that was killed 



DOGS OF WAB 



215 



in action, makes a fitting close to this short 

chapter : 

Pour Clairon — mort au feu. 

Atteint par un eclat de bombe 
II eut bien merite, je crois, 
Une toute petite croix 
Marquant la place de sa tombe. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE year's end 

How Unexpected ! — National Achievements — * Confound their 
Pohtics ' — Vive V entente / — The Inspired Traveller — True Faith 
— Reflections on Montmartre — Aeroplanes at Midnight — 
Victory and Peace 

Paris, August 2, 1915. — Last night I dined 
with a well-known French journalist who, a year 
ago, had been the Berlin correspondent of a 
great French newspaper. This day was the anni- 
versary of his departure from the German capital 
under circumstances which were the reverse of 
agreeable. After a series of adventures during 
the succeeding forty-eight hours, he arrived on 
the east coast of England and proceeded to 
London by train. In his compartment he over- 
heard the conversation of his two travelling com- 
panions, who had joined him, let us say, at Ipswich. 
The one said, 'But you cannot remain neutral;' 
and the other replied, ' Why not ? I don't feel 
sufficiently strongly one way or the other, and, 
what is more, I don't beheve we shall ever fight.' 
My French friend held his breath ; Austria and 

216 



THE YEAR'S END 217 

Serbia were at war ; France, Russia, and Germany- 
were at war ; was it possible that England could 
stand aloof ? And then it transpired, as the 
conversation developed, that his two fellow 
travellers, sublimely unconscious that Europe was 
ablaze, were discussing the possibility of civil war 
in Ulster ! How typical of those times ! Within 
twenty-four hours the British Empire had declared 
war on Germany. Few expected it, very few 
desired it ; none were ready except Mr. Churchill, 
Prince Louis of Battenberg, and the British Navy. 
What volumes of European history have been 
written in blood and tears since that eventful 
date ! What secrets of national psychology have 
been revealed ! What illusions concerning person- 
ages and peoples have been dispelled ! Belgium 
has gained immortal glory by the death of her 
martyrs, the bravery of her Army, and the heroism 
of her King — the one new man brought forth 
by the labours of a world in travail. Serbia, whose 
mihtary efficiency had recently been doubted, 
has shown herself more than a match for the 
Austrian hosts hurled against her and, to the 
astonishment of all men, has flung them back 
whence they came. Germany, by her methods 
of barbarism, now proved up to the hilt, has 



218 WAE PICTURES 

forfeited the respect (to which her marvellous 
organisation might otherwise have entitled her) 
of enemies and neutrals alike ; Eussia has gained 
what Germany lost, by the patient endurance, 
the heroic self-sacrifice, and the high soldierly 
character of an absolutely united Empire ; Italy 
has already given undeniable proof of those 
qualities of long-suffering temperate diplomacy 
and quiet preparation which used not to be 
counted among the talents of the Latin races. 
France, whose army was said to be the shuttle- 
cock of political parties, and whose civilian popula- 
tion was as much weakened by internal dissensions 
as our own, has shaken herself free of her shackles 
and has purged herself of corroding influences 
with instantaneous effect ; whilst the British 
Empire, sero sed serio, has plodded diligently along 
with tardy pertinacity, sometimes the delight 
and sometimes the despair of her Allies ; finding, 
training, and arming her millions from the 
Motherland and the daughter Colonies, until 
the enemy begins to recognise that her reserves 
of men are as inexhaustible as are the riches of 
her treasury. 

A year ago, who would have dared write down 
the French nation, every mother and every son 



THE YEARNS END 219 

of them, for the dogged and determined race 
that all military historians now declare them 
to be ? We have lived through the months of 
winter, when the troops at the Front, themselves 
certain of ultimate victory, wondered whether 
the civiHan population would hold out to the end ; 
and we have survived the early spring when 
the pessimists told us that the French Army would 
never face another winter campaign. Those 
days, those croakers and their prophecies, are 
dead and gone, never to return. The morale 
of the Army was never higher than it is to-day, 
strained though it has been by twelve long months 
of blood and flood and asphyxiating bombs and 
gases ; its one ideal is France, and its watchword 
is Victory. So with the civilians ; whilst the 
Motherland is invaded by the enemy they have 
but one resolution, and it is adamant : to sub- 
ordinate all to the needs of the Army, no matter 
what the sacrifice or the duration or the mourning, 
until France is once more free — and free for ever. 
There have been spasmodic intrigues in Parlia- 
ment, but they have failed ; the pessimists have 
been muzzled, and the subterranean plotters, 
whose incomes depended upon sowing mistrust 
between France and England, have temporarily 



220 WAR PICTURES 

retired from business. But we must not under- 
rate the efiorts of these mischief-makers, for 
they nearly succeeded in their task. Rumour 
of friction between the French and EngHsh head- 
quarter stafis was rife in every club and cafe; 
gossip concerning statesmen at variance, complaints 
about the non-appearance in France of three 
miUion soldiers from England, bitter observations 
regarding industrial unrest and strikes in Great 
Britain — these were the poisons sedulously spread 
about by German mercenaries working with their 
accustomed thoroughness throughout France. That 
they were not fatal to the Entente Cordiale 
is due not to any efforts put forward by British 
statesmen to counteract them during a critical 
summer, but to the common sense and the un- 
bending loyalty of the French people themselves. 
I know that the present Union Sacree between 
the two countries has passed unscathed through 
this last ordeal ; but I am equally sure that, as the 
months pass, the same assaults will be renewed 
to breach the ramparts of our mutual faith and 
pledges. Therefore, no time should be lost in 
engendering a closer intimacy between the peoples 
of Great Britain and of France. Now is the 
psychological moment for a constant interchange 



THE YEAR'S END 221 

of visits between the politicians and the Press 
of both countries : not for the purpose of dinners 
and speeches and demonstrations, but for heart- 
to-heart talks, for exchanges of confidences and 
not compliments, and for the accumulation of 
first-hand knowledge of what is really being said, 
thought, and done on both sides of the Channel. 

For the French, I am sure that such a series 
of visits would remove a mountain of misunder- 
standing. We are a very easy people to misjudge, 
as I have already said elsewhere, and our passion 
for concealing our deepest feelings beneath a cloak 
of indifference is a perpetual snare to our neigh- 
bours. But, once among us, in our homes and 
in our workshops, French intuition will quickly 
pierce the veneer of our assumed complacency 
and reveal the soul of a people as daring and 
determined, when properly led, as were their 
ancestors in the days of the Armada or of the great 
Napoleon himself. And on the English side there 
will be benefit of inestimable value ; we shall meet 
representatives of a nation part of whose native 
soil groans beneath the heel of the invader, but to 
whom nevertheless the word pessimism is unknown. 
Their losses have been immeasurably greater than 
ours, yet you will not find in the whole of France 



222 WAE PICTURES 

a tithe of that spirit of unreasoning dejection 
which is so lamentably apparent among the people 
of London. I know not who is responsible for it — 
it may be our politicians or it may be our Press — 
but I state the fact mildly when I confess that, 
during the past twelve months, I have been increas- 
ingly depressed by each visit that I have paid to 
London — a frame of mind that is automatically 
cured as one approaches nearer to the Front and 
recedes farther from the arm-chairs of Pall Mall 
and the green benches at Westminster. It is 
because I believe this subnormal temperament 
to be a disease dangerous and contagious that I 
want to see it altered ruthlessly and at once. Ex- 
peri entia docet ; the effect of a short visit to France, 
not necessarily to the Front, has worked wonders 
upon the spirits of many Englishmen of my ac- 
quaintance, and they have been the first to confess 
it. Cannot the experiment be repeated on a far 
larger scale ? There are plenty of men who say 
they have nothing to do in England ; let them spend 
an autumn month in France behind the lines. 
There are others, politicians for example, who want 
to do more ; they will best serve their neighbours 
and themselves if they come out and breathe the 
atmosphere of a country in which war is actually 



m^ 



piiiiy^iniiip i iip. 



""»r^ 



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4 






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5: 







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<.^-' -^ o 



THE YEAK'S END 223 

being carried on. It will inspirit them and hearten 
them for their work in England by showing them a 
wonderful picture of patience at home married to 
pluck at the Front, of courage that knows no time- 
limits, and of resolution whose edge is not blunted 
by the disappointment of delay. There are not 
a few who will return from such a visit with their 
opinions modified upon the subject of compulsory 
military service, which, if it does nothing else, 
renders impossible the occurrence and recurrence 
of those miserable industrial strikes that reinforce 
the enemy, morally and materially, with the 
strength of many an army corps. And, when the 
travellers are once more back in England, their 
depression will have left them and they will infuse 
a new spirit of determination and sacrifice among 
those who look to them for information and leader- 
ship. Their faith will have been renewed in the 
power of our race. This is the true faith which 
I learned ' out of the mouths of babes.' One of 
my boys wrote to me in May that a Zeppelin was 
raiding over that part of the coast where his school 
is situated. The alarm was given about midnight, 
and the children were all summoned from their 
beds to assemble downstairs. For the rest I 
quote : 



224 WAR PICTUEES 

When we were all collected in our pyjamas 
in ' big-school ' we made no end of a row and there 
was great excitement. At last one of the masters 
came in and shouted above the din : ' Can't you 
boys be prepared to die quietly, like gentlemen ? ' 
So somebody started singing ' Dulce et decorum 
est pro patria mori ' and we sang it until we were 
sent upstairs to bed again. 



August 4. — It is midnight and I am standing 
on the roof -terrace of a well-known artist's house 
at the very top of Montmartre. We have had 
an extraordinary evening downstairs in the 
' canteen,' where night after night Monsieur and 
Madame Maurice Neumont cater and care for the 
wants of countless poor artists in all the talents, 
who have been thrown out of work by the War. 
The ground-floor of the house is set apart for this 
work of friendship, and there we supped with some 
fifty fellow guests, drawn from the deserted studios 
and concert- halls, the cabarets and theatres of 
Paris. The fare is simple, the prices are low, 
but the heart is high. On the walls are pinned 
sketches and portraits which, in better days, would 
have found a ready market and a satisfactory 
price. Here is a likeness of the sad-eyed poet who, 
with a wreath of blood-red roses on his brow, 










THE MAKTYK, 1915 



Copyrigfit. 



By D. O. "WIDHOPFF 
(ReiDroduced by kind permission of the Artist) 

Suggested by the pubUshed report of the crucifixion of a Canadian sergeant after 
the second battle of Tpres. 



THE YEAK^S END 225 

recited his verses to us to the accompaniment of 
a guitar ; there a sketch of the picturesque old 
tenor in breeches and stockings whose patriotic 
songs with choruses warmed the hearts of his 
audience and, for the moment, drowned their cares 
in a flood of melody. So, with music and recita- 
tions and tobacco, artists and actors, models and 
musicians, passed a joyous evening and allowed 
me in the intervals of conversation to learn some- 
thing of their altered lives. But what touched 
me most was a picture in crayons, drawn especially 
for me by Widopfi the Eussian artist and pinned 
upon the wall opposite to my seat. It represents 
the story of the Canadian sergeant found crucified 
upon a door after the second battle of Ypres, but 
it beautifies and sanctifies that dark tragedy by a 
touch of genius. 

That picture haunts me still as I stand upon 
this lofty terrace with the cloudless sky above me 
and Paris quietly sleeping at my feet. The time 
and place induce the spirit of meditation upon the 
latest Crime of the World and all the misery and 
suffering that the German War has inflicted upon 
humanity in the course of one short year. 

But a mysterious throbbing sound, as of wings 
invisible, and the vision of brilliant star-lamps 



226 • WAR PICTURES 

passing across the silent heavens, recall us from 
reflections upon the past to the more insistent 
considerations of the present and the future. The 
aeroplanes are keeping a ceaseless watch above 
us. We know, my host and I, what France and 
England have escaped and suffered in the year 
that is gone, and, as we gaze out into the starry 
night, we pray with aching hearts for the early 
dawning of the Day of Victory and Peace. 



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